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Nathaniel Hawthorne. 




The 

Blithedale 

Romance 


Nathaniel Hawthorne 


CHICAGO 


W. B. CONKEY COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 






36542 


Library of Congress 

two Curies Received 

AUG 20 1900 

Copyright entry 

m. .CL.SQJM&. 


SECOND COPY. 

Odivered to 

0R0ER DIVISION, 

■A11 G-.27 1900 


Copyright, 1900, by W. B. Conkey Company. 

68738 


PREFACE. 


In the “Blithedale” of this volume many 
readers will, probably, suspect a faint and not 
very faithful shadowing of Brook Farm, in 
Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten 
years ago) was occupied and cultivated by a 
company of socialists. The author does not 
wish to deny that he had this community in 
his mind, and that (having had the good for- 
tune, for a time, to be personally connected 
with it) he has occasionally availed himself of 
his actual reminiscences, in the hope of giving 
a more life-like tint to the fancy-sketch in the 
following pages. He begs it to be under- 
stood, however, that he has considered the in- 
stitution itself as not less fairly the subject of 
fictitious handling than the imaginary person- 
ages whom he has introduced there. His 
whole treatment of the affair is altogether inci- 
dental to the main purpose of the romance ; 
nor does he put forward the slightest preten- 
sions to illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclu- 
sion, favorable or otherwise, in respect to 
socialism. 

In short, his present concern with the social- 
ist community is merely to establish a theater, 
a little removed from the highway of ordinary 
3 


4 


PREFACE. 


travel, where the creatures of his brain ma 
play their phantasmagorical antics, withot 
exposing them to too close a comparison wit , 
the actual events of real lives. In the ol 
countries, with which fiction has long bee ; 
conversant, a certain conventional privileg fe 
seems to be awarded to the romancer; h: 
work is not put exactly side by side wit * 
nature ; and he is allowed a license with regar i 
to every-day probability, in view of the in ^ 
proved effects which he is bound to produc 
thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrar) 
there is as yet no such Faery Land, so lik-* 
the real world, that, in a suitable remotenest 
one cannot well tell the difference, but wit 
an atmosphere of strange enchantment, behel 
through which the inhabitants have a proprie 
of their own. This atmosphere is what tl 
American romancer needs. In its absence, tl. 
beings of imagination are compelled to sho 
themselves in the same category as actuall 
living mortals; a necessity that generally ren a 
ders the paint and pasteboard of their compc 
sition but too painfully discernible. With th f 
idea of partially obviating this difficulty (th j 
sense of which has always pressed very heavi' | 
upon him), the author has ventured to mal :l 
free with his old and affectionately remen ji i 
bered home at Brook Farm, as being certainl 1 ; 
the most romantic episode of his own life,- 4i 
essentially a day-dream, and yet a fact, — an 
thus offering an available foothold betwee 
fiction and reality. Furthermore, the seer. , e 

M 


PREFACE. 


5 


v^s in good keeping with the personages whom 
ii desired to introduce. 

/{These characters, he feels it right to say, are 
frtirely fictitious. It would, indeed (consid- 
ering how few amiable qualities he distributes 
'$ong his imaginary progeny), be a most 
’jevous wrong to his former excellent associ- 
r ; ‘S, were the author to allow it to be supposed 
bit he has been sketching any of their like- 
. ^ses. Had he attempted it, they would at 
■>st have recognized the touches of a friendly 
-;ncil. But he has done nothing of the kind, 
je self-conceited Philanthropist; the high- 
^rited Woman, bruising herself against the 
tfrow limitations of her sex; the weakly 
ftiden, whose tremulous nerves endow her 
vfi. sibylline attributes; the Minor Poet, be- 
lling life with strenuous aspirations, which 
.7 out with his youthful fervor; — all these 
ght have been looked for at Brook Farm, 
by some accident, never made their 
;.,pearance there. 

The author cannot close his reference to this 
olject, without expressing a most earnest 
k ji that some one of the many cultivated and 
vjosophic minds, which took an interest in 
,5 enterprise, might now give the world its 
^pry. Ripley, with whom rests the honor- 
ye paternity of the institution, Dana, Dwight, 
vanning, Burton, Parker, for instance, — with 
.prs, whom he dares not name, because they 
themselves from the public eye, — among 
;j;e is the ability to convey both the out- 
ard narrative and the inner truth and 


6 


PREFACE. 


spirit of the whole affair, together with the les- 
sons which those years of thought and toil 
must have elaborated, for the behoof of future 
experimentalists. Even the brilliant Howadji 
might find as rich a theme in his youthful re- 
miniscences of Brook Farm, and a more novel 
one, — close at hand as it lies, — than those which 
he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to 
seek, in Syria, and along the current of the 
Nile. 

Concord (Mass.), May, 1852. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. Old Moodie 9 

II. Blithedale 15 

III. A Knot of Dreamers 22 

IV. The Supper-Table 34 

V. Until Bed-time 45 

VI. Coverdale’s Sick-Chamber 54 

VII. The Convalescent 67 

VIII. A Modern Arcadia 78 

IX. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla 93 

X. A Visitor from Town 109 

XI. The Wood-Path 119 

XII. Coverdale’s Hermitage 131 

XIII. Zenobia’s Legend 141 

XIV. Eliot’s Pulpit 156 

XV. A Crisis 171 

XVI. Leave-Takings 182 

XVII. The Hotel 192 

XVIII. The Boarding-House 202 

XIX. Zenobia’s Drawing-Room 211 

XX. They Vanish 222 

XXI. An Old Acquaintance 229 

XXII. Fauntleroy 239 

XXIII. A Village-Hall 254 

XXIV. The Masqueraders 267 

XXV. The Three Together 279 

XXVI. Zenobia and Coverdale 291 

XXVII. Midnight 300 

XXVIII. Blithedale Pasture 312 

XXIX. Miles Coverdale’s Confession 321 

7 





v' • ; , vi 

, 





* 

. 

















































































% 







THE 


BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER I. 

OLD MOODIE. 

The evening before my departure for Blithe- 
dale, I was returning to my bachelor apart- 
ments, after attending the wonderful exhibi- 
tion of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man, 
of rather shabby appearance, met me in an ob- 
scure part of the street. 

“Mr. Coverdale,” said he softly, “can I 
speak with you a moment?’' 

As I have casually alluded to the Veiled 
Lady, it may not be amiss to mention, for the 
benefit of such of my readers as are unac- 
quainted with her now forgotten celebrity, that 
she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line ; 
one of the earliest that had indicated the birth 
of a new science, or the revival of an old hum- 
bug. Since those times, her sisterhood have 
grown too numerous to attract much individ- 
ual notice ; nor, in fact, has any one of them 
ever come before the public under such skil- 
fully contrived circumstances of stage-effect as 
those which at once mystified and illuminated 

2 Blithedale 9 


10 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


the remarkable performances of the lady in 
question. Now-a-days, in the management 
of his “subject,” “clairvoyant,” or “medium,” 
the exhibitor affects the simplicity and open- 
ness of scientific experiment ; and even if he 
profess to tread a step or two across the boun- 
daries of the spiritual world, yet carries with 
him the laws of our actual life, and extends 
them over his preternatural conquests. 
Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary, 
all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of pic- 
turesque disposition, and artistically contrasted 
light and shade, were made available, in order 
to set the apparent miracle in the strongest 
attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the 
case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest 
of the spectator was further wrought up by 
the enigma of her identity, and an absurd 
rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, 
and at one time very prevalent), that a beauti- 
ful young lady of family and fortune, was en- 
shrouded within the misty drapery of the veil. 
It was white, but somewhat of a subdued silver 
sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud; and, 
falling over the wearer from head to foot, was 
supposed to insulate her from the material 
world, from time and space, and to endow her 
with many of the privileges of a disembodied 
spirit. 

Her pretensions, however, whether miracu- 
lous or otherwise, have little to do with the pres- 
ent narrative ; except indeed, that I had pro- 
pounded, for the Veiled Lady’s prophetic 
solution, a query as to the success of our 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


11 


Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the 
way, was of the true Sibylline stamp, — non- 
sensical in its first aspect, yet, on closer study, 
unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of 
which has certainly accorded with the event. 
I was turning over this riddle in my mind, and 
trying to catch its slippery purport by the tail, 
when the old man above mentioned interrupted 
me. 

“Mr. Coverdale! — Mr. Coverdale!” said he, 
repeating my name twice, in order to make up 
for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which 
he uttered it. “I ask your pardon, sir, but I 
hear you are going to Blithedale to-morrow.” 

I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red- 
tipped nose, and the patch over one eye; and 
likewise saw something characteristic in the 
old fellow’s way of standing under the arch of 
a gate, only revealing enough of himself to 
make me recognize him as an acquaintance. 
He was a very shy personage, this Mr. 
Moodie; and the trait was the more singular, 
as his mode of getting his bread necessarily 
brought him into the stir and hubbub of the 
world more than the generality of men. 

“Yes, Mr. Moodie,” I answered, wondering 
what interest he could take in the fact, “it is 
my intention to go to Blithedale to-morrow. 
Can I be of any service to you before my de- 
parture?” 

“If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale,” said he, 
“you might do me a very great favor.” 

“A very great one?” repeated I, in a tone 
that must have expressed but little alacrity of 


12 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


beneficence, although I was ready to do the 
old man any amount of kindness involving no 
special trouble to myself. “A very great 
favor, do you say? My time is brief, Mr. 
Moodie, and I have a good many preparations 
to make. But be good enough to tell me what 
you wish. ” 

“Ah, sir,” replied Old Moodie, “I don’t quite 
like to do that; and, on further thoughts, Mr. 
Coverdale, perhaps I had better apply to some 
older gentleman, or to some lady, if you would 
have the kindness to make me known to one, 
who may happen to be going to Blithedale. 
You are a young man, sir!” 

“Does that fact lessen my availability for 
your purpose?” asked I. “However, if an 
older man will suit you better, there is Mr. 
Hollingsworth, who has three or four years 
the advantage of me in age, and is a much 
more solid character, and a philanthropist to 
boot. I am only a poet, and, so the critics tell 
me, no great affair at that! But what can 
this business be, Mr. Moodie? It begins to 
interest me; especially since you hint that a 
lady’s influence might be found desirable. 
Come, I am really anxious to be of service to 
you.” 

But the old fellow, in his civil and demure 
manner, was both freakish and obstinate; 
and he had now taken some notion or other 
into his head that made him hesitate in his 
former design. 

“I wonder, sir,” said he, “whether you 
know a lady whom they call Zenobia?” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


13 


4 ‘Not personally,” I answered, “although I 
expect that pleasure to-morrow, as she has got 
the start of the rest of us, and is already a res- 
ident at Blithedale. But have you a literary 
turn, Mr. Moodie? or have you taken up the 
advocacy of women’s rights? or what else can 
have interested you in this lady? Zenobia, by 
the by, as I suppose you know, is merely her 
public name; a sort of mask in which she 
comes before the world, retaining all the privi- 
leges of privacy, — a contrivance, in short, like 
the white drapery of the Veiled Lady, only a 
little more transparent. But it is late. Will 
you tell me what I can do for you?” 

“Please to excuse me to-night, Mr. Cover- 
dale,” said Moodie. “You are very kind; but 
I am afraid I have troubled you, when, after 
all, there may be no need. Perhaps, with your 
good leave, I will come to your lodgings to- 
morrow morning, before you set out for Blithe- 
dale. I wish you a good-night, sir, and beg 
pardon for stopping you.” 

And so he slipped away; and, as he did not 
show himself the next morning, it was only 
through subsequent events that I ever arrived 
at a plausible conjecture as to what his busi- 
ness could have been. Arriving at my room, 
I threw a lump of cannel coal upon the grate, 
lighted a cigar, and spent an hour in musings 
of every hue, from the brightest to the most 
somber; being, in truth, not so very confident 
as at some former periods that this final step, 
which would mix me up irrevocably with 
the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that 


14 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


could possibly be taken. It was nothing short 
of midnight when I went to bed, after drink- 
ing a glass of particularly fine sherry, on which 
I used to pride myself, in those days. It was 
the very last bottle; and I finished it, with a 
friend, the next forenoon, before setting out 
for Blithedale. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


15 


CHAPTER II. 

BLITHEDALE. 

There can hardly remain for me (who am 
really getting to be a frosty bachelor, with 
another white hair, every week or so, in my 
mustache), there can hardly flicker up again 
so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as that 
which I remember, the next day, at Blithe- 
dale. It was a wood-fire, in the parlor of an 
old farm-house, on an April afternoon, but 
with the fitful gusts of a wintry snow-storm 
roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that 
fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the 
ashes from the embers in my memory, and 
blow them up with a sigh, for lack of more 
inspiring breath. Vividly, for an instant, but, 
anon, with the dimmest gleam, and with just 
as little fervency for my heart as for my 
finger-ends! The stanch oaken logs were long 
ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be 
represented, if at all, by the merest phos- 
phoric glimmer, like that which exudes, rather 
than shines, from damp fragments of decayed 
trees, deluding the benighted wanderer 
through a forest. Around such chill mockery 
of a fire some few of us might sit on the with- 
ered leaves, spreading out each a palm toward 
the imaginary warmth, and talk over our ex- 


16 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


ploded scheme for beginning the life of Para- 
dise anew. 

Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, 
I am bold to affirm, — nobody, at least, in our 
bleak little world of New England, — had 
dreamed of Paradise that day, except as the 
pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such 
materials as were at hand, could the most skil- 
ful architect have constructed any better imita- 
tion of Eve’s bower than might be seen in the 
snow-hut of an Esquimaux. But we made 
a summer of it, in spite of the wild drifts. 

It was an April day, as already hinted, and 
well toward the middle of the month. When 
morning dawned upon me, in town, its tem- 
perature was mild enough to be pronounced 
even balmy, by a lodger, like myself, in one 
of the midmost houses of a brick block, — each 
house partaking of the warmth of all the rest, 
besides the sultriness of its individual furnace- 
heat. But, toward noon, there had come snow, 
driven along the streets by a north-easterly 
blast, and whitening the roofs and side-walks 
with a business-like perseverance that would 
have done credit to our severest January tem- 
pest. It set about its task apparently as much 
in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from 
a thaw for months to come. The greater, 
surely, was my heroism, when, puffing out a 
final whiff of cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosy 
pair of bachelor-rooms, — with a good fire burn- 
ing in the grate, and a closet right at hand, 
where there was still a bottle or two in the 
champagne-basket, and a residuum of claret ia 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


17 


a box, — quitted, I say, these comfortable quar- 
ters, and plunged into the heart of the pitiless 
snow-storm, in quest of a better life. 

The better life! Possibly, it would hardly 
look so, now ; it is enough if it looked so then. 
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the 
doubt whether one may not be going to prove 
one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is, to 
resist the doubt ; and the profoundest wisdom, 
to know when it ought to be resisted, and 
when to be obeyed. 

Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if 
not more sagacious, to follow out one’s day- 
dream to its natural consummation, although, 
if the vision have been worth the having, it is 
certain never to be consummated otherwise 
than by a failure. And what of that? Its 
airiest fragments, impalpable as they may be, 
will possess a value that lurks not in the most 
ponderous realities of any practicable scheme. 
They are not the rubbish of the mind. What- 
ever else I may repent of, therefore, let it be 
reckoned neither among my sins nor follies 
that I once had faith and force enough to form 
generous hopes of the world’s destiny, — yes! — 
and to do what in me lay for their accomplish- 
ment; even to the extent of quitting a warm 
fireside, flinging away a freshly-lighted cigar, 
and traveling far beyond the strike of city 
clocks, through a drifting snow-storm. 

There were four of us who rode together 
through the storm; and Hollingsworth, who 
had agreed to be of the number, was acci- 
dentally delayed, and set forth at a later hour 

2 Blithedale 


18 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


alone. As we threaded the streets, I remem- 
ber how the buildings on either side seemed 
to press too closely upon us, insomuch that 
our mighty hearts found barely room enough 
to throb between them. The snow-fall, too, 
looked inexpressibly dreary (I had almost 
called it dingy), coming down through an 
atmosphere of city smoke, and alighting on 
the side- walk only to be moulded into the 
impress of somebody’s patched boot or over- 
shoe. Thus the track of an old conventional- 
ism was visible on what was freshest from the 
sky. But, when we left the pavements, and 
our muffled hoof-tramps beat upon a desolate 
extent of country road, and were effaced by 
the unfettered blast as soon as stamped, then 
there was better air to breathe. Air that had 
not been breathed once and again ! air that 
had not been spoken into words of falsehood, 
formality and error, like all the air of the 
dusky city! 

“How pleasant it is!” remarked I, while the 
snow-flakes flew into my mouth the moment it 
was opened. “How very mild and balmy is 
this country air!” 

“Ah, Coverdale, don’t laugh at what little 
enthusiasm you have left!’’ said one of my 
companions. “I maintain that this nitrous 
atmosphere is really exhilarating; and, at any 
rate, we can never call ourselves regenerated 
men till a February north-easter shall be as 
grateful to us as the softest breeze of June.” 

So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly 
and merrily along, by stone-fences that were 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


19 


half-buried in the wave-like drifts ; and through 
patches of woodland, where the tree-trunks 
opposed a snow-encrusted side toward the north 
east; and within ken of deserted villas, 
with no foot-prints in their avenues; and 
past scattered dwellings, whence puffed the 
smoke of country fires, strongly impregnated 
with the pungent aroma of burning peat. 
Sometimes, encountering a traveler, we 
shouted a friendly greeting; and he, un- 
muffling his ears to the bluster and the snow- 
spray, and listening eagerly, appeared to think 
our courtesy worth less than the trouble which 
it cost him. The churl! He understood the 
shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelli- 
gence for our blithe tones of brotherhood. 
This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy, on 
the traveler’s part, was one among the innu- 
merable tokens how difficult a task we had in 
hand, for the reformation of the world. We 
rode on, however, with still unflagging spirits, 
and made such good companionship with the 
tempest that, at our journey’s end, we pro- 
fessed ourselves almost loth to bid the rude 
blusterer good-by. But, to own the truth, I 
was little better than an icicle, and began to 
be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold. 
And now we were seated by the brisk fireside 
of the old farm-house, — the same fire that 
glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences 
at the beginning of this chapter. There we 
sat, with the snow melting out of our hair 
and beards, and our faces all a-blaze, what with 
the past inclemency and present warmth. It 


20 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


was, indeed, a right good fire that we found 
awaiting us, built up of great, rough logs, 
and knotty limbs and splintered fragments, of 
an oak-tree, such as farmers are wont to keep 
for their own hearths, — since these crooked 
and unmanageable boughs could never be 
measured into merchantable cords for the 
market. A family of the old Pilgrims might 
have swung their kettle over precisely such a 
fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger one; and, 
contrasting it with my coal-grate, I felt so 
much the more that we had transported our- 
selves a world-wide distance from the system of 
society that shackled us at breakfast-time. 

Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of 
stout Silas Foster, who was to manage the 
farm, at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the 
art of husbandry) bade us a hearty welcome. 
At her back— a back of generous breadth — 
appeared two young women, smiling most hos- 
pitably, but looking rather awkward withal, as 
not well knowing what was to be their position 
in our new arrangement of the world. We 
shook hands affectionately, all round, and con- 
gratulated ourselves that the blessed state of 
brotherhood and sisterhood, at which we aimed, 
might fairly be dated from this moment. Our 
greetings were hardly concluded, when the 
door opened, and Zenobia, — whom I had never 
before seen, important as was her place in our 
enterprise, — Zenobia entered the parlor. 

This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with 
our literary biography, need scarcely be told) 
was not her real name. She had assumed it, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


21 


in the first instance, as her magazine signa- 
ture ; and, as it accorded well with something 
imperial which her friends attributed to this 
lady’s figure and deportment, they, half-laugh- 
ingly, adopted it in their familiar intercourse 
with her. She took the appellation in good 
part, and even encouraged its constant use; 
which, in fact, was thus far appropriate, that 
our Zenobia — however humble looked her new 
philosophy — had as much native pride as any 
queen would have known what to do with. 


22 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER III. 

A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 

Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, 
mellow voice, and gave each of us her hand, 
which was very soft and warm. She had 
something appropriate, I recollect, to say to 
every individual ; and what she said to myself 
was this: 

“I have long wished to know you, Mr. Cover- 
dale, and to thank you for your beautiful 
poetry, some of which I have learned by heart; 
or, rather, it has stolen into my memory, with- 
out my exercising any choice or volition about 
the matter. Of course — permit me to say — 
you do not think of relinquishing an occupation 
in which you have done yourself so much 
credit. I would almost rather give you up as 
an associate, than that the world should lose 
one of its true poets!” 

‘‘Ah, no; there will not be the slightest 
danger of that, especially after this inestimable 
praise from Zenobia,” said I, smiling, and 
blushing, no doubt, with excess of pleasure. 
“I hope, on the contrary, now to produce some- 
thing that shall really deserve to be called 
poetry, — true, strong, natural, and sweet, as 
is the life which we are going to lead, — some- 
thing that shall have the notes of wild birds 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


23 


twittering through it, or a strain like the wind- 
anthems in the woods, as the case may be.” 

“Is it irksome to you to hear your own 
verses sung?” asked Zenobia, with a gracious 
smile. “If so, I am very sorry, for you will 
certainly hear me singing them, sometimes, 
in the summer evenings.” 

“Of all things,” answered I, “that is what 
will delight me most.” 

While this passed, and while she spoke to 
my companions, I was taking note of Zenobia’s 
aspect ; and it impressed itself on me so dis- 
tinctly, that I can now summon her up, like a 
ghost, a little wanner than the life, but other- 
wise identical with it. She was dressed as 
simply as possible, in an American print (I 
think the dry goods people call it so), but with 
a silken kerchief, between which and her gown 
there was one glimpse of a white shoulder. 
It struck me as a great piece of good fortune 
that there should be just that glimpse. Her 
hair, which was dark, glossy, and of singular 
abundance, was put up rather soberly and 
primly, without curls, or other ornament, 
except a single flower. It was an exotic, of 
rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hot-house 
gardener had just clipped it from the stem. 
That flower has struck deep root into my mem- 
ory. I can both see it and smell it, at this 
moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly, as it 
must have been, and yet enduring only for a 
day, it was more indicative of the pride 
and pomp which had a luxuriant growth in 


24 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Zenobia’s character than if a great diamond 
had sparkled among her hair. 

Her hand, though very soft, was larger than 
most women would like to have, or than they 
could afford to have, though not a whit too 
large in proportion with the spacious plan of 
Zenobia’s entire development. It did one 
good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, 
although its natural tendency lay in another 
direction than toward literature) so fitly cased. 
She was, indeed, an admirable figure of a 
woman, just on the hither verge of her richest 
maturity, with a combination of features which 
it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if 
some fastidious persons might pronounce then 
a little deficient in softness and delicacy. But 
we find enough of those attributes everywhere. 
Preferable — by the way of variety, at least — 
was Zenobia’s bloom, health, and vigor, which 
she possessed in such overflow that a man might 
well have fallen in love with her for their sake 
only. In her quiet moods, she seemed rather 
indolent ; but when really in earnest, particu- 
larly if there were a spice of bitter feeling, 
she grew all alive, to her finger-tips. 

“I am the first comer,” Zenobia went on to 
say, while her smile beamed warmth upon us 
all; ‘‘so I take the part of hostess, for to-day, 
and welcome you as if to my own fireside. 
You shall be my guests, too, at supper. To- 
morrow, if you please, we will be brethren 
and sisters, and begin our new life from day- 
break. ” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


25 


“Have we our various parts assigned?” 
asked some one. 

“O, we of the softer sex,” responded Ze- 
nobia, with her mellow, almost broad laugh, — 
most delectable to hear, but not in the least 
like an ordinary woman’s laugh, — “we women 
(there are four of us here already) will take 
the domestic and indoor part of the business, 
as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to 
roast, to fry, to stew, — to wash, and iron, and 
scrub, and sweep, — and at our idler intervals, 
to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing, — 
these, I suppose, must be feminine occupations, 
for the present. By and by, perhaps, when 
our individual adaptations begin to develop 
themselves, it may be that some of us who 
wear the petticoat will go a-field, and leave 
the weaker brethren to take our places in the 
kitchen. ” 

“What a pity,” I remarked, “that the kitch- 
en, and the house-work generally, cannot 
be left out of our system altogether! It is odd 
enough that the kind of labor which falls to 
the lot of women is just that which chiefly dis- 
tinguishes artificial life — the life of degenerated 
•mortals — from the life of Paradise. Eve had 
no dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, and no 
washing-day.” 

“I am afraid,” said Zenobia, with mirth 
gleaming out of her eyes, “we shall find some 
difficulty in adopting the Paradisiacal system 
for at least a month to come. Look at that 
snow-drift sweeping past the window! Are 
there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the 


26 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


pine-apples been gathered to-day? Would 
you like a bread-fruit, or a cocoa-nut? Shall 
I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no, 
Mr. Coverdale ; the only flower hereabouts is 
the one in my hair, which I got out of a green- 
house this morning. As for the garb of 
Eden,” added she, shivering playfully, ‘‘I shall 
not assume it till after May-day!” 

Assuredly, Zenobia could not have intended 
it ; — the fault must have been entirely in my 
imagination. But these last words, together 
with something in her manner, irresistibly 
brought up a picture of that fine, perfectly 
developed figure, in Eve’s earliest garment. 
Her free, careless, generous modes of expres- 
sion, often had this effect, of creating images, 
which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite 
decorous when born of a thought that passes 
between man and woman. I imputed it, at 
that time, to Zenobia’ s noble courage, con- 
scious of no harm, and scorning the petty 
restraints which take the life and color out of 
other women’s conversation. There was 
another peculiarity about her. We seldom meet 
with women, now-a-days, and in this country, 
who impress us as being women at all; — their 
sex fades away, and goes for nothing, in ordi- 
nary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One 
felt an influence breathing out of her such as 
we might suppose to come from Eve, when 
she was just made, and her Creator brought 
her to Adam, saying, ‘‘Behold! here is a 
woman!” Not that I would convey the idea 
of especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


27 


shyness, but of a certain warm and rich char- 
acteristic, which seems, for the most part, to 
have been refined away out of the feminine 
system. 

“And now,” continued Zenobia, “I must go 
and help get supper. Do you think you can 
be content, instead of figs, pine-apples, and all 
the other delicacies of Adam’s supper-table, 
with tea and toast, and a certain modest supply 
of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of 
a house-wife, I brought hither in a basket? 
And there shall be bread and milk, too, if the 
innocence of your taste demands it.” 

The whole sisterhood now went about their 
domestic avocations, utterly declining our 
offers to assist, further than by bringing wood, 
for the kitchen-fire, from a huge pile in the 
back yard. After heaping up more than a suf- 
ficient quantity, we returned to the sitting- 
room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and 
began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with 
a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared 
Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and 
grisly-bearded. He came from foddering the 
cattle in the barn, and from the field, where 
he had been ploughing, until the depth of the 
snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. 
He greeted us in pretty much the same tone 
as if he were speaking to his oxen, took a quid 
from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off his wet 
cow-hide boots, and sat down before the fire 
in his stocking-feet. The steam arose from 
his soaked garments, so that the stout yeoman 
looked vaporous and specter-like. 


28 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“Well, folks,” remarked Silas, “you’ll be 
wishing yourselves back to town again, if this 
weather holds ” 

And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, 
as the twilight fell silently and sadly out of 
the sky, its gray or sable flakes intermingling 
themselves with the fast descending snow. 
The storm, in its evening aspect, was decid- 
edly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our 
especial behoof, — a symbol of the cold, deso- 
late, distrustful phantoms that invariably 
haunt the mind, on the eve of adventurous 
enterprises, to warn us back within the bound- 
aries of ordinary life. 

But our courage did not quail. We would 
not allow ourselves to be depressed by the 
snow-drift trailing past the window, any more 
than if it had been the sigh of a summer wind 
among rustling boughs. There have been 
few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever 
men might lawfully dream awake, and give 
utterance to their wildest visions without dread 
of laughter or scorn on the part of the audi- 
ence, — yes, and speak of earthly happiness, 
for themselves and mankind, as an object to 
be hopefully striven for, and probably attained, 
— we who made that little semi-circle round 
the blazing fire, were those very men. We 
had left the rusty iron frame-work of society 
behind us; we had broken through many hin- 
drances that are powerful enough to keep 
most people on the weary tread-mill of the 
established system, even while they feel its 
irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


29 


We had stepped down from the pulpit; we had 
flung aside the pen ; we had shut up the ledger; 
we had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, 
enervating indolence, which is better, after 
all, than most of the enjoyments within mortal 
grasp. It was our purpose — a generous one, 
certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in full propor- 
tion with its generosity — to give up whatever 
we had heretofore attained, for the sake of 
showing mankind the example of a life gov- 
erned by other than the false and cruel prin- 
ciples on which human society has all along 
been based. And, first of all, we had divorced 
ourselves from pride, and were striving to sup- 
ply its place with familiar love. We meant to 
lessen the laboring man’s great burden of toil, 
by performing our due share of it at the cost 
of our own thews and sinews. We sought our 
profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by 
the strong hand from an enemy, or filching it 
craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves 
(if, indeed, there were any such in New Eng- 
land), or winning it by selfish competition with 
a neighbor; in one or another of which fashions 
every son of woman both perpetrates and 
suffers his share of the common evil, whether 
he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our 
institution, we purposed to offer up the earnest 
toil of our bodies, as a prayer no less than an 
effort for the advancement of our race. 

Therefore, if we built splendid castles (pha- 
lansteries, perhaps they might be more fitly 
called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among 
the fervid coals of the hearth around which we 


30 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


were clustering, and if all went to rack with 
the crumbling embers, and have never since 
arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves 
no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I 
could once think better of the world’s improv- 
ability than it deserved. It is a mistake into 
which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime ; or, 
if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can 
thus magnanimously persist in error. 

Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our con- 
versation ; but when he did speak, it was very 
much to some practical purpose. For instance : 

“Which man among you,” quoth he, “is the 
best judge of swine? Some of us must go to 
the next Brighton fair, and buy half a dozen 
pigs.” 

Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from 
among the swinish multitude for this? And, 
again, in reference to some discussion about 
raising early vegetables for the market : 

“We shall never make any hand at market- 
gardening, ” said Silas Foster, “unless the 
women folks will undertake to do all the weed- 
ing. We haven’t team enough for that and 
the regular farm-work, reckoning three of you 
city folks as worth one common field-hand. 
No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up a 
little too early in the morning, to compete 
with the market-gardeners round Boston.” 

It struck me as rather odd, that one ot the 
first questions raised, after our separation from 
the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, 
should relate to the possibility of getting the 
advantage over the outside barbarians in their 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


31 


own field of labor. But, to own the truth, I 
very soon became sensible that, as regarded 
society at large, we stood in a position of new 
hostility, rather than new brotherhood. Nor 
could this fail to be the case, in some degree, 
until the bigger and better half of society 
should range itself on our side. Constituting 
so pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably 
estranged from the rest of mankind in pretty 
fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual 
bond among ourselves. 

This dawning idea, however, was driven 
back into my inner consciousness ' by the 
entrance of Zenobia. She came with the wel- 
come intelligence that supper was on the table. 
Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiv- 
ing that her one magnificent flower had grown 
rather languid (probably by being exposed to 
the fervency of the kitchen fire), she flung it 
on the floor as unconcernedly as a village girl 
would throw away a faded violet. The action 
seemed proper to her character, although, 
methought, it would still more have befitted 
the bounteous nature of this beautiful woman 
to scatter fresh flowers from her hand, and to 
revive faded ones by her touch. Neverthe- 
less, it was a singular but irresistible effect ; 
the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic 
enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquer- 
ade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia, in 
which we grown-up men and women were 
making a play-day of the years that were given 
us to live in. I tried to analyze this impres- 
sion, but not with much success. 


32 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“It really vexes me,” observed Zenobia, as 
we left the room, “that Mr. Hollingsworth 
should be such a laggard. I should not have 
thought him at all the sort of person to be 
turned back by a puff of contrary wind, or a 
few snow-flakes drifting into his face.” 

“Do you know Hollingsworth personally?” I 
inquired. 

“No; only as an auditor — auditress, I mean 
— of some of his lectures,” said she. “What a 
voice he has! and what a man he is! Yet not 
so much an intellectual man, I should say, as a 
great heart; at least, he moved me more 
deeply than I think myself capable of being 
moved, except by the stroke of a true, strong 
heart against my own. It is a sad pity that he 
should have devoted his glorious powers to 
such a grimy, unbeautiful and positively hope- 
less object as this reformation of criminals, 
about which he n; s himself and his wretch- ! 
edly small audien so very miserable. To 
tell you a secret, I never could tolerate a phil- 
anthropist before. Could you?” 

“By no means,” I answered; “neither can 
I now.” 

“They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable 
set of mortals,” continued Zenobia. “I should j 
like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better, if 
the philanthropy had been left out. At all 
events, as a mere matter of taste, I wish he 
would let the bad people alone, and try to 
benefit those who are not already past his 
help. Do you suppose he will be content to 
spend his life, or even a few months of it, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


33 


among tolerably virtuous and comfortable 
individuals, like ourselves?” 

“Upon my word, I doubt it,” said I. “If 
we wish to keep him with us, we must sys- 
tematically commit, at least, one crime apiece! 
Mere peccadilloes will not satisfy him.” 

Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a 
glance upon me; but, before I could make 
out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen, 
where, in accordance with the rustic simplicity 
of our new life, the supper-table was spread. 


1 c. 

•: an 
t: < or 


4 


8 Blithedale 


34 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE SUPPER-TABLE. 

The pleasant fire-light! I must still keep 
harping on it. 

The kitchen-hearth had an old-fashioned 
breadth, depth and spaciousness, far within 
which lay what seemed the butt of a good-sized 
oak-tree, with the moisture bubbling merrily 
out of both ends. It was now half an hour 
beyond dusk. The blaze from an armful of 
substantial sticks, rendered more combustible 
by brush-wood and pine, flickered powerfully 
on the smoke-blackened walls and so cheered 
our spirits that we cared not what inclemency 
might rage and roar on the other side of our 
illuminated windows. A yet sultrier warmth 
was bestowed by a goodly quantity of peat, 
which was crumbling to white ashes among 
the burning brands, and incensed the kitchen 
with its not ungrateful fragrance. The ex- 
uberance of this household fire would alone 
have sufficed to bespeak us no true farmers; 
for the New England yeoman, if he have the 
misfortune to dwell within practicable distance 
of a wood-market, is as niggardly of each stick 
as if it were a bar of California gold. 

But it was fortunate for us, on that wintry 
eve of our untried life, to enjoy the warm and 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


35 


radiant luxury of a somewhat too abundant 
fire. If it served no other purpose, it made 
the men look so full of youth, warm blood, and 
hope, and the women- such of them, at least, 
as were anywise convertible by its magic — so 
very beautiful, that I would cheerfully have 
spent my last dollar to prolong the blaze. 
As for Zenobia, there was a glow in her cheeks 
that made me think of Pandora, fresh from 
Vulcan’s workshop, and full of the celestial 
warmth by dint of which he had tempered and 
moulded her. 

“Take your places, my dear friends all,” 
cried she; “seat yourselves without ceremony, 
and you shall be made happy with such tea as 
not many of the world’s working-people, 
except yourselves, will find in their cups to- 
night. After this one supper, you may drink 
butter-milk, if you please. To-night we will 
quaff this nectar, which, I assure you, could 
not be bought with gold.’’ 

We all sat down, — grisly Silas Foster, his 
rotund helpmate, and the two bouncing hand- 
maidens, included, — and looked at one another 
in a friendly but rather awkward way. It 
was the first practical trial of our theories of 
equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we 
people of superior cultivation and refinement 
(for as such, I presume, we unhesitatingly 
reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were 
already accomplished toward the millennium 
of love. The truth is, however, that the labor- 
ing-oar was with our unpolished companions; 
it being far easier to condescend than to accept 


36 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


of condescension. Neither did I refrain from 
questioning, in secret, whether some of us — 
and Zenobia among the rest — would so quietly 
have taken our places among these good peo- 
ple, save for the cherished consciousness that 
it was not by necessity, but choice. Though 
we saw fit to drink our tea out of earthen 
cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was 
at our own option to use pictured porcelain 
and handle silver forks again to-morrow. 
This same salvo, as to the power of regaining 
our former position, contributed much, I fear, 
to the equanimity with which we subsequently 
bore many of the hardships and humiliations 
of a life of toil. If ever I have deserved (which 
has not often been the case, and, I think, 
never), but if ever I did deserve to be soundly 
cuffed by a fellow-mortal, for secretly putting 
weight upon some imaginary social advantage, 
it must have been while I was striving to prove 
myself ostentatiously his equal, and no more. 
It was while I sat beside him on his cobbler’s 
bench, or clinked my hoe against his own in 
the corn-field, or broke the same crust of bread, 
my earth-grimed hand to his, at our noon-tide 
lunch. The poor, proud man should look at 
both sides of sympathy like this. 

The silence which followed upon our sitting 
down to table grew rather oppressive; indeed, 
it was hardly broken by a word, during the 
first round of Zenobia’s fragrant tea. 

“I hope,” said I at last, “that our blazing- 
windows will be visible a great way off. 
There is nothing so pleasant and encouraging 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


37 


to a solitary traveler, on a stormy night, as a 
flood of fire-light seen amid the gloom. These 
ruddy window-panes cannot fail to cheer the 
hearts of all that look at them. Are they not 
warm and bright with the beacon-fire which 
we have kindled for humanity?” 

“The blaze of that brush- wood will only 
last a minute or two longer,” observed Silas 
Foster; but whether he meant to insinuate 
that our moral illumination would have as 
brief a term, I cannot say. 

“Meantime,” said Zenobia, “it may serve to 
guide some wayfarer to a shelter.” 

And, just as she said this, there came a 
knock at the house- door. 

“There is one of the world’s wayfarers,” 
said I. 

“Ay, ay, just so!” quoth Silas Foster. “Our 
firelight will draw stragglers, just as a candle 
draws dorbugs, on a summer night.” 

Whether to enjoy a dramatic suspense, or 
that we were selfishly contrasting our own 
comfort with the chill and dreary situation of 
the unknown person at the threshold, or that 
some of us city-folk felt a little startled at the 
knock which came so unseasonably, through 
night and storm, to the door of the lonely 
farm-house, — so it happened, that nobody, for 
an instant or two, arose to answer the sum- 
mons. Pretty soon, there came another knock. 
The first had been moderately loud; the sec- 
ond was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles 
of the applicant must have left their mark in 
the door-panel. 


38 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“He knocks as if he had a right to come in,” 
said Zenobia, laughing. “And what are we 
thinking of? It must be Mr. Hollingsworth!” 

Hereupon, I went to the door, unbolted, and 
flung it wide open. There, sure enough, stood 
Hollingsworth, his shaggy great-coat all cov- 
ered with snow, so that he looked quite as 
much like a polar bear as a modern philan- 
thropist. 

“Sluggish hospital^ this!” said he, in those 
deep tones of his, which seemed to come out 
of a chest as capacious as a barrel. “It would 
have served you right if I had lain down and 
spent the night on the door-step, just for the 
sake of putting you to shame. But here is a 
guest who will need a warmer and softer 
bed.” 

And, stepping back to the wagon in which 
he had journeyed hither, Hollingsworth re- 
ceived into his arms and deposited on the door- 
step a figure enveloped in a cloak. It was 
evidently a woman; or, rather, — judging from 
the ease with which he lifted her, and the little 
space which she seemed to fill in his arms, — 
a slim and unsubstantial girl. As she showed 
some hesitation about entering the door, 
Hollingsworth, with his usual directness and 
lack of ceremony, urged her forward, not 
merely within the entry, but into the warm 
and strongly-lighted kitchen. 

“Who is this?” whispered I, remaining 
behind with him while he was taking off his 
great-coat. 

“Who? Really, I don’t know,” answered 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


39 


Hollingsworth, looking at me with some sur- 
prise. “It is a young person who belongs here, 
however; and, no doubt, she has been ex- 
pected. Zenobia, or some of the women-folks 
can tell you all about it. ” 

“I think not,” said I, glancing toward the 
new comer and the other occupants of the 
kitchen. “Nobody seems to welcome her. I 
should hardly judge that she was an expected 
guest.” 

“Well, well,” said Hollingsworth, quietly. 
“We’ll make it right.” 

The stranger, or whatever she were, re- 
mained standing precisely on that spot of the 
kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth’s kindly 
hand had impelled her. The cloak falling 
partly off, she was seen to be a very young 
woman, dressed in a poor but decent gown, 
made high in the neck, and without any regard 
to fashion or smartness Her brown hair fell 
down from beneath a hood, not in curls, but 
with only a slight wave; her face was of a 
wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual 
seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, 
like a flower-shrub that had done its best to 
blossom in too scanty light. To complete the 
pitiableness of her aspect, she shivered, either 
with cold, or fear, or nervous excitement, so 
that you might have beheld her shadow vibrat- 
ing on the fire-lighted wall. In short, there 
has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a 
figure as this young girl’s; and it was hardly 
possible to help being angry with her, from 
mere despair of doing anything for her com- 


40 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


fort. The fantasy occurred to me that she 
was some desolate kind of a creature, doomed to 
wander about in snow-storms; and that, 
though the ruddiness of our window-panes had 
tempted her into a human dwelling, she would 
not remain long enough to melt the icicles out 
of her hair. 

Another conjecture likewise came into my 
mind. Recollecting Hollingsworth’s sphere of 
philanthropic action, I deemed it possible that 
he might have brought one of his guilty 
patients, to be wrought upon, and restored to 
spiritual health, by the pure influences which 
our mode of life would create. 

As yet, the girl had not stirred. She stood 
near the door, fixing a pair of large, brown, 
melancholy eyes upon Zenobia — only upon Ze- 
nobia! — she evidently sawjnothing else in the 
room, save that bright, fair, rosy, beautiful 
woman. It was the strangest look I ever wit- 
nessed; long a mystery tome, and forever a 
memory. Once she seemed about to move for- 
ward and greet her, — I know not with what 
warmth, or with what words; — but, finally, in- 
stead of doing so, she dropped down upon her 
knees, clasped her hands, and gazed piteously 
into Zenobia’s face. Meeting no kindly recep- 
tion, her head fell on her bosom. 

I never thoroughly forgave Zenobia for her 
conduct on this occasion. But women are 
always more cautious in their casual hospital- 
ities than men. 

“What does the girl mean?” cried she, in 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


41 


rather a sharp tone. “Is she crazy? Has she 
no tongue?” 

And here Hollingsworth stepped forward. 

“No wonder if the poor child's tongue is 
frozen in her mouth,” said he, — and I think he 
positively frowned at Zenobia. “The very 
heart will be frozen in her bosom, unless you 
women can warm it, among you, with the 
warmth that ought to be in your own!” 

Hollingsworth’s appearance was very strik- 
ing at this moment. He was then about thirty 
years old, but looked several years older, with 
his great shaggy head, his heavy brow, his 
dark complexion, his abundant beard, and the 
rude strength with which his features seemed 
to have been hammered out of iron, rather 
than chiseled or moulded from any finer or 
softer material. His figure was not tall, but 
massive and brawny, and well befitting his 
original occupation, which — as the reader prob- 
ably knows — was that of a blacksmith. As for 
external polish, or mere courtesy of manner, 
he never possessed more than a tolerably edu- 
cated bear; although, in his gentler moods, 
there was a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, 
in his gesture, and in every indescribable man- 
ifestation, which few men could resist, and no 
woman. But he now looked stern and re- 
proachful; and it was with that inauspicious 
meaning in his glance that Hollingsworth first 
met Zenobia’s eyes, and began his influence 
upon her life. 

To my surprise, Zenobia — of whose haughty 
spirit I had been told so many examples — abso- 

4 Blithedala 


42 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


lutely changed color, and seemed mortified and 
confused. 

“You do not quite do me justice, Mr. Hol- 
lingsworth,” she said, almost humbly. “I am 
willing to be kind to the poor girl. Is she a 
protegee of yours? What can I do for her?” 

“Have you anything to ask of this lady?” 
said Hollingsworth, kindly, to the girl. “I 
remember you mentioned her name before we 
left town. ” 

“Only that she will shelter me,” replied the 
girl, tremulously. “Only that she will let me 
be always near her.” 

“Well, indeed,” exclaimed Zenobia, recover- 
ing herself, and laughing, “this is an adven- 
ture, and well worthy to be the first incident 
in our life of love and free-heartedness! But 
I accept it, for the present, without further 
question, — only,” added she, “it would be a 
convenience if we knew your name.” 

“Priscilla,” said the girl; and it appeared to 
me that she hesitated whether to add any- 
thing more, and decided in the negative. 
“Pray do not ask me my other name, — at least, 
not yet, — if you will be so kind to a forlorn 
creature. ” 

Priscilla! — Priscilla! I repeated the name to 
myself, three or four times; and, in that little 
space, this quaint and prim cognomen had so 
amalgamated itself with my idea of the girl 
that it seemed as if no other name could have 
adhered to her for a moment. Heretofore, the 
poor thing had not shed any tears; but now 
that she found herself received, and at least 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


43 


temporarily established, the big drops began 
to ooze out from beneath her eyelids, as if she 
were full of them. Perhaps it showed the iron 
substance of my heart, that I could not help 
smiling at this odd scene of unknown and un- 
accountable calamity into which our cheerful 
party had been entrapped, without the liberty 
of choosing whether to sympathize or no. Hol- 
lingsworth’s behavior was certainly a great 
deal more creditable than mine. 

“Let us not pry further into her secrets, ’’ he 
said to Zenobia and the rest of us, apart, — and 
his dark, shaggy face looked really beautiful 
with its expression of thoughtful benevolence. 
“Let us conclude that Providence has sent her 
to us, as the first fruits of the world, which we 
have undertaken to make happier than we find 
it. Let us warm her poor, shivering body with 
this good fire, and her poor, shivering heart 
with our best kindness. Let us feed her, and 
make her one of us. As we do by this friend- 
less girl, so shall we prosper. And, in good 
time, whatever is desirable for us to know will 
be melted out of her, as inevitably as those 
tears which we see now.” 

“At least,” remarked I, “you may tell us 
how and where you met with her.” 

“An old man brought her to my lodgings, ” 
answered Hollingsworth, “and begged me to 
convey her to Blithedale, where — so I under- 
stood him — she had friends; and this is posi- 
tively all I know about the matter.” 

Grim Silas Foster, all this while, had been 
busy at the supper-table, pouring out his own 


44 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


tea, and gulping it down with no more sense 
of its exquisiteness than if it were a decoction 
of catnip; helping himself to pieces of dipped 
toast on the flat of his knife-blade, and drop- 
ping half of it on the table-cloth ; using the 
same serviceable implement to cut slice after 
slice of ham ; perpetrating terrible enormities 
with the butter-plate; and, in all other re- 
spects, behaving less like a civilized Christian 
than the worst kind of an ogre. Being by this 
time fully gorged, he crowned his amiable ex- 
ploits with a draught from the water pitcher, 
and then favored us with his opinion about the 
business in hand. And, certainly, though they 
proceeded out of an unwiped mouth, his ex- 
pressions did him honor. 

“Give the girl a hot cup of tea, and a thick 
slice of this first-rate bacon,” said Silas, like a 
sensible man as he was. “That’s what she 
wants. Let her stay with us as long as she 
likes, and help in the kitchen, and take the 
cow-breath at milking-time; and, in a week or 
two, she’ll begin to look like a creature of this 
world. ’ ’ 

So we sat down again to supper, and Pris- 
cilla along with us. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


45 


CHAPTER V. 

UNTIL BED-TIME. 

Silas Foster, by the time we concluded our 
meal, had stripped off his coat, and planted 
himself on a low chair by the kitchen fire, with 
a lapstone, a hammer, a piece of sole-leather, 
and some waxed ends, in order to cobble an 
old pair of cow-hide boots; he being, in his 
own phrase, “something of a dab” (whatever 
degree of skill that may imply) at the shoe- 
making business. We heard the tap of his 
hammer, at intervals, for the rest of the even- 
ing. The remainder of the party adjourned to 
the sitting-room. Good Mrs. Foster took her 
knitting- work, and soon fell fast asleep, still 
keeping her needles in brisk movement, and, 
to the best of my observation, absolutely foot- 
ing a stocking out of the texture of a dream. 
And a very substantial stocking it seemed to 
be. One of the two handmaidens hemmed a 
towel, and the other appeared to be making a 
ruffle, for her Sunday’s wear, out of a little bit 
of embroidered muslin, which Zenobia had 
probably given her. 

It was curious to observe how trustingly, 
and yet how timidly, our poor Priscilla betook 
herself into the shadow of Zenobia’s protection. 
She sat beside her on a stool, looking up, every 


46 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


now and then, with an expression of humble 
delight, at her new friend’s beauty. A bril- 
liant woman is often an object of the devoted 
admiration — it might almost be termed wor- 
ship, or idolatry — of some young girl, who per- 
haps beholds the cynosure only at an awful dis- 
tance, and has as little hope of personal inter- 
course as of climbing among the stars of heaven. 
We men are too gross to comprehend it. Even 
a woman, of mature age, despises or laughs at 
such a passion. There occurred to me no mode 
of accounting for Priscilla’s behavior, except 
by supposing that she had read some of Zeno- 
bia’s stories (as such literature goes every- 
where), or her tracts in defense of the sex, and 
had come hither with the one purpose of being 
her slave. There is nothing parallel to this, I 
believe — nothing so foolishly disinterested, and 
hardly anything so beautiful, — in the masculine 
nature, at whatever epoch of life; or, if there 
be, a fine and rare development of character 
might reasonably be looked for from the youth 
who should prove himself capable of such self- 
forgetful affection. 

Zenobia happening to change her seat, I took 
the opportunity, in an undertone, to suggest 
some such notion as the above. 

“Since you see the young woman in so poeti- 
cal a light,” replied she, in the same tone, 
“you had better turn the affair into a ballad. 
It is a grand subject, and worthy of supernat- 
ural machinery. The storm, the startling 
knock at the door, the entrance of the sable 
knight Hollingsworth and this shadowy snow- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


47 


maiden, who, precisely at the stroke of mid- 
night, shall melt away at my feet in a pool of 
ice-cold water, and give me my death with a 
pair of wet slippers! And when the verses are 
written, and polished quite to your mind, I will 
favor you with my idea as to what the girl 
really is. ” 

“Pray let me have it now,” said I; “it shall 
be woven into the ballad.” 

“She is neither more nor less,” answered 
Zenobia, “than a seamstress from the city; 
and she has probably no more transcendental 
purpose than to do my miscellaneous sewing, 
for I suppose she will hardly expect to make 
my dresses.” 

“How can you decide upon her so easily?” I 
inquired. 

“O, we women judge one another by tokens 
that escape the obtuseness of masculine per- 
ceptions,” said Zenobia. “There is no proof 
which you would be likely to appreciate, ex- 
cept the needle-marks on the tip of her fore- 
finger. Then, my supposition perfectly ac- 
counts for her paleness, her nervousness, and 
her wretched fragility. Poor thing! She has 
been stifled with the heat of a salamander-stove, 
in a small, close room, and has drunk coffee, 
and fed upon dough-nuts, raisins, candy, and 
all such trash, till she is scarcely half-alive; 
and so, as she has hardly any physique, a poet, 
like Mr. Mills Coverdale, may be allowed to 
think her spiritual.” 

“Look at her now!” whispered I. 

Priscilla was gazing toward us, with an inex- 


48 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


pressible sorrow in her wan face, and great 
tears running down her cheeks. It was diffi- 
cult to resist the impression that, cautiously as 
we had lowered our voices, she must have over- 
heard and been wounded by Zenobia’s scornful 
estimate of her character and purposes. 

“What ears the girl must have!” whispered 
Zenobia, with a look of vexation, partly comic, 
and partly real. “I will confess to you that I 
cannot quite make her out. However, I am 
positively not an ill-natured person, unless 
when very grievously provoked ; and as you, 
and especially Mr. Hollingsworth, take so 
much interest in this odd creature, — and as she 
knocks, with a very slight tap, against my own 
heart, likewise, — why, I mean to let her in. 
From this moment, I will be reasonably kind 
to her. There is no pleasure in tormenting a 
person of one’s own sex, even if she do favor 
one with a little more love than one can con- 
veniently dispose of ; — and that, let me say, 
Mr. Coverdale, is the most troublesome offense 
you can offer to a woman.” 

“Thank you,” said I, smiling; “I don’t 
mean to be guilty of it.” 

She went toward Priscilla, took her hand, 
and passed her own rosy finger-tips, with a 
pretty, caressing movement, over the girl’s 
hair. The touch had a magical effect. So 
vivid a look of joy flushed up beneath those 
fingers, that it seemed as if the sad and wan 
Priscilla had been snatched away, and another 
kind of creature substituted in her place. 
This one caress, bestowed voluntarily by Zeno- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


49 


bia, was evidently received as a pledge of all 
that the stranger sought from her, whatever 
the unuttered boon might be. From that in- 
stant, too, she melted in quietly amongst us, 
and was no longer a foreign element. Though 
always an object of peculiar interest, a riddle, 
and a theme of frequent discussion, her tenure 
at Blithedale was thenceforth fixed. We no 
more thought of questioning it, than if Pris- 
cilla had been recognized as a domestic sprite, 
who had haunted the rustic fireside of old, 
before we had ever been warmed by its blaze. 

She now produced, out of a work-bag that 
she had with her, some little wooden instru- 
ments (what they are called, I never knew), 
and proceeded to knit, or net, an article which 
ultimately took the shape of a silk purse. As 
the work went on, I remembered to have seen 
just such purses before; indeed, I was the 
possessor of one. Their peculiar excellence, 
besides the great delicacy and beauty of the 
manufacture, lay in the almost impossibility 
that any uninitiated person should discover the 
aperture ; although, to a practiced touch, they 
would open as wide as charity or prodigality 
might wish. I wondered if it were not a sym- 
bol of Priscilla’s own mystery. 

Notwithstanding the new confidence with 
which Zenobia had inspired her, our guest 
showed herself disquieted by the storm. 
When the strong puffs of wind spattered the 
snow against the windows, and made the oaken 
frame of the farm-house creak, she looked at 
us apprehensively, as if to inquire whether 

4 Blithedale 


50 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


these tempestuous outbreaks did not betoken 
some unusual mischief in the shrieking blast. 
She had been bred up, no doubt, in some close 
nook, some inauspiciously sheltered court of 
the city, where the uttermost rage of a temp- 
est, though it might scatter down the slates of 
the roof into the bricked area, could not shake 
the casement of her little room. The sense of 
vast, undefined space, pressing from the outside 
against the black panes of our uncurtained win- 
dows, was fearful to the poor girl, heretofore 
accustomed to the narrowness of human limits, 
with the lamps of neighboring tenements glim- 
mering across the street. The house prob- 
ably seemed to her adrift on the great ocean of 
the night. A little parallelogram of sky was 
all that she had hitherto known of nature, so 
that she felt the awfulness that really exists in 
its limitless extent. Once, while the blast was 
bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia’s robe, 
with precisely the air of one who hears her own 
name spoken at a distance, but is unutterably 
reluctant to obey the call. 

We spent rather an incommunicative even- 
ing. Hollingsworth hardly said a word, unless 
when repeatedly and pertinaciously addressed. 
Then, indeed, he would glare upon us from the 
thick shrubbery of his meditations like a tiger 
out of a jungle, make the briefest reply pos- 
sible, and betake himself back into the solitude 
of his heart and mind. The poor fellow had 
contracted this ungracious habit from the 
intensity with which he contemplated his own 
ideas, and the infrequent sympathy which they 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


51 


met with from his auditors, — a circumstance 
that seemed only to strengthen the implicit 
confidence that he awarded to them. His 
heart, I imagine, was never really interested in 
our socialist scheme, but was forever busy 
with his strange, and, as most people thought 
it, impracticable plan, for the reformation of 
criminals through an appeal to their higher 
instincts. Much as I liked Hollingsworth, it 
cost me many a groan to tolerate him on this 
point. He ought to have commenced his 
investigation of the subject by perpetrating 
some huge sin in his proper person, and exam- 
ining the condition of his higher instincts after- 
ward. 

The rest of us formed ourselves into a com- 
mittee for providing our infant community 
with an appropriate name, — a matter of greatly 
more difficulty than theuninitiated readerwould 
suppose. Blithedale was neither good nor 
bad. We should have resumed the old Indian 
name of the premises, had it possessed the oil- 
and- honey flow which the aborigines were so 
often happy in communicating to their local 
appellations; but it chanced to be a harsh, ill- 
connected, and interminable word, which 
seemed to fill the mouth with a mixture of very 
stiff clay and very crumbly pebbles. Zenobia 
suggested “Sunny Glimpse, ” as expressive of 
a vista into a better system of society. This 
we turned over and over, for a while, acknowl- 
edging its prettiness, but concluded it to be 
rather too fine and sentimental a name (a fault 
inevitable by literary ladies, in such attempts) 


52 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


for sun-burnt men to work under. I ventured 
to whisper “Utopia,” which* however, was 
unanimously scouted down, and the proposer 
very harshly maltreated, as if he had intended 
a latent satire. Some were for calling our 
institution “The Oasis,” in view of its being 
the one green spot in the moral sand- waste of 
the world; but others insisted on a proviso 
for reconsidering the matter at a twelve- 
month’s end, when a final decision might be 
had, whether to name it “The Oasis,” or 
Sahara. So, at last, finding it impracticable to 
hammer out anything better, we resolved that 
the spot should still be Blithedale, as being of 
good augury enough. 

The evening wore on, and the outer solitude 
looked in upon us through the windows, 
gloomy, wild, and vague, like another state of 
existence, close beside the little sphere of 
warmth and light in which we were the prat- 
tlers and bustlers of a moment. By and by, 
the door was opened by Silas Foster, with a 
cotton handkerchief about his head, and a tal- 
low candle in his hand. 

“Take my advice, brother farmers,” said he, 
with a great, broad, bottomless yawn, “and 
get to bed as soon as you can. I shall sound 
the horn at daybreak; and we’ve got the cattle 
to fodder, and nine cows to milk, and a dozen 
other things to do, before breakfast.” 

Thus ended the first evening at Blithedale. 
I went shivering to my fireless chamber, with 
the miserable consciousness (which had been 
growing upon me for several hours past) that I 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


53 


had caught a tremendous cold, and should 
probably awaken, at the blast of the horn, a 
fit subject for a hospital. The night proved a 
feverish one. During the greater part of it, I 
was in that vilest of states when a fixed idea 
remains in the mind, like the nail in Sisera’s 
brain, while innumerable other ideas go and 
come, and flutter to and fro, combining con- 
stant transition with intolerable sameness. 
Had I made a record of that night’s half-wak- 
ing dreams, it is my belief that it would have 
anticipated several of the chief incidents of this 
narrative, including a dim shadow of its catas- 
trophe. Starting up in bed, at length, I saw 
that the storm was past, and the moon was 
shining on the snowy landscape, which looked 
like a lifeless copy of the world in marble. 

From the bank of the distant river, which 
was shimmering in the moonlight, came the 
black shadow of the only cloud in heaven, 
driven swiftly by the wind, and passing over 
meadow and hillock, vanishing amid tufts of 
leafless trees, but reappearing on the hither 
side, until it swept across our door-step. 

How cold an Arcadia was this! 


54 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER VI. 
coverdale’s sick-chamber. 

The horn sounded at daybreak, as Silas Fos- 
ter had for warned us, harsh, uproarious, inex- 
orably drawn out, and as sleep-dispelling as if 
this hard-hearted old yeoman had got hold of 
the trump of doom. 

On all sides I could hear the creaking of the 
bedsteads, as the brethren of Blithedale started 
from slumber, and thrust themselves into their 
habiliments, all awry, no doubt, in their haste 
to begin the reformation of the world. Ze- 
nobia put her head into the entry, and besought 
Silas Foster to cease his clamor, and to be kind 
enough to leave an armful of firewood and a 
pail of water at her chamber-door. Of the 
whole household, — unless, indeed, it were 
Priscilla, for whose habits, in this particular, I 
cannot vouch, — of all our apostolic society, 
whose mission was to bless mankind, Hollings- 
worth, I apprehend, was the only one who 
began the enterprise with prayer. My sleep- 
ing-room being but thinly partitioned from 
his, the solemn murmur of his voice made its 
way to my ears, compelling me to be an auditor 
of his awful privacy with the Creator It 
affected me with a deep reverence for Hollings- 
worth, which no familiarity .then existing, "or 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


55 


that afterward grew more intimate between us, 
— no, nor my subsequent perception of his 
own great errors, — ever quite effaced. It is 
so rare, in these times, to meet with a man of 
prayerful habits (except, of course, in the pul- 
pit), that such an one is decidedly marked out 
by a light of transfiguration, shed upon him in 
the divine interview from which he passes into 
his daily life. 

As for me, I lay abed; and if I said my 
prayers, it was backward, cursing my day as 
bitterly as patient Job himself. The truth 
was, the hot-house warmth of a town-residence, 
and the luxurious life in which I indulged 
myself, had taken much of the pith out of my 
physical system ; and the wintry blast of the 
preceding day, together with the general chill 
of our airy old farm-house, had got fairly into 
my heart and the marrow of my bones. In 
this predicament, I seriously wished — selfish as 
it may appear — that the reformation of society 
had been postponed about half a century, or, 
at all events, to such a date as should have put 
my intermeddling with it entirely out of the 
question. 

What, in the name of common sense, had 
had I to do with any better society than I had 
always lived in? It had satisfied me well 
enough. My pleasant bachelor-parlor, sunny 
and shadowy, curtained and carpeted, with 
the bed-chamber adjoining; my center-table, 
strewn with books and periodicals; my writ- 
ing-desk, with a half-finished poem, in a stanza 
of my own contrivance ; my morning lounge at 


56 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


the reading-room or picture-gallery; my noon- 
tide walk along the cheery pavement, with the 
suggestive succession of human faces, and the 
brisk throb of human life, in which I shared; 
my dinner at the Albion, where I had a hun- 
dred dishes at command, and could banquet as 
delicately as the wizard Michael Scott when 
the devil fed him from the King of France’s 
kitchen; my evening at the billiard-club, the 
concert, the theater, or at somebody’s party, 
if I pleased; — vrhat could be better than all 
this? Was it better to hoe, to mow, to toil and 
moil amidst the accumulations of a barn-yard ; 
to be the chamber-maid of two yoke of oxen 
and a dozen cows; to eat salt beef, and earn 
it with the sweat of my brow, and thereby 
take the tough morsel out of some wretch’s 
mouth, into whose vocation I had thrust 
myself? Above all, was it better to have a 
fever, and die blaspheming, as I was like to 
do? 

In this wretched plight, with a furnace in 
my heart, and another in my head, by the heat 
of which I was kept constantly at the boiling 
point, yet shivering at the bare idea of extrud- 
ing so much as a finger into the icy atmosphere 
of the room, I kept my bed until breakfast- 
time, when Hollingsworth knocked at the door, 
and entered. 

“Well, Coverdale,” cried he, “you bid fair 
to make an admirable farmer! Don’t you 
mean to get up to-day?” 

“Neither to-dajr nor to-morrow,” said I, 
hopelessly. “I doubt if I ever rise again!” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


57 


“What is the matter, now?” he asked. 

I told him my piteous c'ase, and besought 
him to send me back to town in a close car- 
riage. 

“No, no!” said Hollingsworth, with kindly 
seriousness. “If you are really sick, we must 
take care of you. ’’ 

Accordingly, he built a fire in my chamber, 
and, having little else to do while the snow 
lay on the ground, established himself as my 
nurse. A doctor was sent for, who, being 
homoeopathic, gave me as much medicine, in 
the course of a fortnight’s attendance, as would 
have lain on the point of a needle. They fed 
me on water-gruel, and I speedily became a 
skeleton above ground. But, after all, I have 
many precious recollections connected with 
that fit of sickness. 

Hollingsworth’s more than brotherly, attend- 
ance gave me inexpressible comfort. Most 
men — and certainly I could not always claim 
to be one of the exceptions — have a natural 
indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feel- 
ing, toward those whom disease, or weakness, 
or calamity of any kind, causes to falter and 
faint amid the rude jostle of our selfish exist- 
ence. The education of Christianity, it is 
true, the sympathy of a like experience, and 
the example of women, may soften, and, pos- 
sibly, subvert, this ugly characteristic of our 
sex; but it is originally there, and has likewise 
its analogy in the practice of our brute brethren, 
who hunt the sick or disabled member of the 
herd from among them, as an enemy. It is 


58 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


for this reason that the stricken deer goes 
apart, and the sick lion grimly withdraws him- 
self into his den. Except in love, or the 
attachments of kindred, or other very long and 
habitual affection we really have no tender- 
ness. But there was something of the woman 
moulded into the great, stalwart frame of 
Hollingsworth ; nor was he ashamed of it, as 
men often are of what is best in them, nor 
seemed ever to know that there was such a soft 
place in his heart. I knew it well, however, 
at that time, although afterward it came nigh 
to be forgotten. Methought here could not be 
two such men alive as Hollingsworth. There 
never was any blaze of a fireside that warmed 
and cheered me, in the down-sinkings and 
shiverings of my spirit, so effectually as did 
the light out of those eyes, which lay so deep 
and dark under his shaggy brows. 

Happy the man that has such a friend beside 
him when he comes to die ! and unless a friend 
like Hollingsworth be at hand, — as most prob- 
ably there will not, — he had better make up 
his mind to die alone. How many men, I 
wonder, does one meet with, in a life time, 
whom he would choose for his death-bed com- 
panions! At the crisis of my fever, I besought 
Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the 
room, but continually to make me sensible of 
his own presence, by a grasp of the hand, a 
word, a prayer, if he thought good to utter it; 
and that then he should be the witness how 
courageously I would encounter the worst. It 
still impresses me as almost a matter of regret, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


59 


that I did not die then, when I had tolerably 
made up my mind to it; for Hollingsworth 
would have gone with me to the hither verge 
of life, and have sent his friendly and hopeful 
accents far over on the other side, while I 
should be treading the unknown path. Now, 
were I to send for him, he would hardly come 
to my bed-side, nor should I depart the easier 
for his presence. 

“You are not going to die, this time,” said 
he, gravely smiling. “You know nothing 
about sickness, and think your case a great 
deal more desperate than it is.” 

“Death should take me while I am in the 
mood,” replied I, with a little of my custom- 
ary levity. 

“Have you nothing to do in life,” asked 
Hollingsworth, “that you fancy yourself so 
ready to leave it?” 

“Nothing,” answered I; “nothing, that I 
know of, unless to make pretty verses, and 
play a part, with Zenobia and the rest of the 
amateurs, in our pastoral. It seems but an 
unsubstantial sort of business, as viewed 
through a mist of fever. But, dear Hollings- 
worth, your own vocation is evidently to be a 
priest, and to spend your days and nights in 
helping your fellow-creatures to draw peace- 
ful dying breaths.” 

“And by which of my qualities, ” inquired 
he, “can you suppose me fitted for this awful 
ministry?” 

“By your tenderness,” I said. “It seems 
to me the reflection of God’s own love. ” 


60 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“And you call me tender!” repeated Hol- 
lingsworth, thoughtfully. “I should rather 
say that the most marked trait in my character 
is an inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal 
man has no right to be so inflexible as it is my 
nature and necessity to be.” 

“I do not believe it,” I replied. 

But, in due time, I remembered what he 
said. 

Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested, my 
disorder was never so serious as, in my ignor- 
ance of such matters, I was inclined to con- 
sider it. After so much tragical preparation, 
it was positively rather mortifying to find my- 
self on the mending hand. 

All the other members of the Community 
showed me kindness according to the full 
measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought 
me my gruel, every day, made by her own 
hands (not very skilfully, if the truth must be 
told) ; and whenever I seemed inclined to con- 
verse, would sit by my bed-side, and ‘talk with 
so much vivacity as to add several gratuitous 
throbs to my pulse. Her poor little stories and 
tracts never half did justice to her intellect. 
It was only the lack of a fitter avenue that 
drove her to seek development in literature. 
She was made (among a thousand other things 
that she might have been) for a stump-oratress. 
I recognized no severe culture in Zenobia; her 
mind was full of weeds. It startled me, some- 
times, in my state of moral as well as bodily 
faint-heartedness, to observe the hardihood of 
her philosophy. She made no scruple of over* 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


61 


setting all human institutions, and scattering 
them as with a breeze from her fan. A female 
reformer, in her attacks upon society, has an 
instinctive sense of where the life lies, and is 
inclined to aim directly at that spot. Espe- 
cially the relation between the sexes is 
naturally among the earliest to attract her 
notice. 

Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. 
The homely simplicity of her dress could not 
conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenli- 
ness of her presence. The image of her form 
and face should have been multiplied all over 
the earth. It was wronging the rest of man- 
kind to retain her as the spectacle of only a 
few. The stage would have been her proper 
sphere. She should have made it a point of 
duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and 
sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because 
the cold decorum of the marble would consist 
with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that 
the eye might chastely be gladdened with her 
material perfection in its entireness. I know 
not well how to express, that the native glow 
of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh- 
warmth over her round arms, and what was 
visible of her full bust, — in a word, her 
womanliness incarnated, — compelled me some- 
times to close my eyes, as if it were not quite 
the privilege of modesty to gaze at her. 
Illness and exhaustion, no doubt, had made 
me morbidly sensitive. 

I noticed — and wondered how Zenobia con- 
trived it — that she had always a new flower in 


62 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


her hair. And still it was a hot-house flower, 
— an outlandish flower, — a flower of the tropics, 
such as appeared to have sprung passionately 
out of a soil the very weeds of which would 
be fervid and spicy. Unlike as was the flower 
of each successive day to the preceding one, it 
yet so assimilated its richness to the rich 
beauty of the woman, that I thought it the 
only flower fit to be worn; so fit, indeed, that 
Nature had evidently created this floral gem, 
in a happy exuberance, for the one purpose of 
worthily adorning Zenobia’s head. It might 
be that my feverish fantasies clustered them- 
selves about this peculiarity, and caused it to 
look more gorgeous and wonderful than if 
beheld with temperate eyes. In the height of 
my illness, as I well recollect, I went so far 
as to pronounce it preternatural. 

“Zenobia is an enchantress!” whispered I 
once to Hollingsworth. “She is a sister of the 
Veiled Lady. That flower in her hair is a 
talisman. If you were to snatch it away, she 
would vanish, or be transformed into some- 
thing else. ” 

‘‘What does he say?” asked Zenobia. 

“Nothing that has an atom of sense in it,” 
answered Hollingsworth. “He is a little 
beside himself, I believe, and talks about your 
being a witch, and of some magical property 
in the flower that you wear in your hair. ” 

“It is an idea worthy of a feverish poet,” 
said she, laughing rather compassionately, 
and taking out the flower. “I scorn to owe 
anything to magic. Here, Mr. Hollingsworth, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


63 


you may keep the spell while it has any vir- 
tue in it; but I cannot promise you not to 
appear with a new one to-morrow! It is the 
one relic of my more brilliant, my happier 
days!” 

The most curious part of the matter was, 
that long after my slight delirium had passed 
away, — as long, indeed, as I continued to 
know this remarkable woman, — her daily 
flower affected my imagination, though more 
slightly, yet in very much the same way. The 
reason must have been that, whether inten- 
tionally on her part or not, this favorite orn- 
ament was actually a subtile expression of 
Zenobia’s character. 

One subject, about which — very imperti- 
nently, moreover — I perplexed myself with a 
great many conjectures, was, whether Zenobia 
had ever been married. The idea, it must be 
understood, was unauthorized by any circum- 
stance or suggestion that had made its way to 
my ears. So young as I beheld her, and the 
freshest and rosiest woman of a thousand, 
there was certainly no need of imputing to her 
a destiny already accomplished; the proba- 
bility was far greater that her coming years 
had all life’s richest gifts to bring. If the 
great event of a woman’s existence had been 
consummated, the world knew nothing of it, 
although the world seemed to know Zenobia 
well. It was a ridiculous piece of romance, 
undoubtedly, to imagine that this beautiful 
personage, wealthy' as she was, and holding a 
position that might fairly enough be called 


64 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


distinguished, could have given herself away 
so privately, but that some whisper and sus- 
picion, and, by degrees, a full understanding 
of the fact, would eventually be blown abroad. 
But then, as I failed not to consider, her origi- 
nal home was at a distance of many hundred 
miles. Rumors might fill the social atmos- 
phere, or might once have filled it, there, 
which would travel but slowly, against the 
wind, toward our north-eastern metropolis, and 
perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it. 

There was not — and I distinctly repeat it — 
the slightest foundation in my knowledge for 
any surmise of the kind. But there is a spe- 
cies of intuition, — either a spiritual lie, or the 
subtle recognition of a fact, — which comes to 
us in a reduced state of the corporeal system. 
The soul gets the better of the body, after 
wasting illness, or when a vegetable diet may 
have mingled too much either in the blood. 
Vapors then rise up to the brain, and take 
shapes that often image falsehood, but some- 
times truth. The spheres of our companions 
have, at such periods, a vastly greater influ- 
ence upon our own than when robust health 
gives us a repellant and self-defensive energy. 
Zenobia’s sphere, I imagine, impressed itself 
powerfully on mine, and transformed me, 
during this period of my weakness, into some- 
thing like a mesmerical clairvoyant. 

Then, also, as anybody could observe, the 
freedom of her deportment (though, to some 
tastes, it might commend itself as the utmost 
perfection of manner in a youthful widow or 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


65 


a blooming matron) was not exactly maiden- 
like. What girl had ever laughed as Zenobia 
did? What girl had ever spoken in her mellow 
tones? Her unconstrained and inevitable 
manifestation, I said often to myself, was that 
of a woman to whom wedlock had thrown wide 
the gates of mystery. Yet sometimes I strove 
to be ashamed to these conjectures. I acknowl- 
edged it as a masculine grossness, — a sin of 
wicked interpretation, of which man is often 
guilty toward the other sex, — thus to mistake 
the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of 
a noble and generous disposition. Still, it 
was of no avail to reason with myself, nor to 
upbraid myself. Pertinaciously the thought, 
“Zenobia is a wife, — Zenobia has lived and 
loved ! There is no folded petal, no latent dew- 
drop, in this perfectly-developed rose!” irre- 
sistibly that thought drove out all other con- 
clusions, as often as my mind reverted to the 
subject. 

Zenobia was conscious of my observation, 
though not, I presume, of the point to which 
it led me. 

“Mr. Coverdale,” said she, one day, as she 
saw me watching her, while she arranged my 
gruel on the table, “I have been exposed to a 
great deal of eye-shot in the few years of my 
mixing in the world, but never, I think, to 
precisely such glances as you are in the habit 
of favoring me with. I seem to interest you 
very much; and yet — or else a woman’s in- 
stinct is for once deceived — I cannot reckon 


5 Blithedale 


66 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


you as an admirer. What are you seeking to 
discover in me?” 

“The mystery of your life,” answered I, 
surprised into the truth by the unexpected- 
ness of her attack. “And you will never 
tell me.” 

She bent her head toward me, and let me 
look into her eyes, as if challenging me to 
drop a plummet-line down into the depths of 
her consciousness. 

“I see nothing now,” said I, closing my own 
eyes, “unless it be the face of a sprite laugh- 
ing at me from the bottom of a deep well.” 

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, 
when he knows, or suspects, that any woman 
of his acquaintance has given herself away. 
Otherwise, the matter could have been no 
concern of mine. It was purely speculative ; 
for I should not, under any circumstances, 
have fallen in love with Zenobia. The riddle 
made me so nervous, however, in my sensitive 
condition of mind and body, that I most un- 
gratefully began to wish that she would let 
me alone. Then, too, her gruel was very 
wretched stuff, with almost invariably the 
smell of pine smoke upon it, like the evil taste 
that is said to mix itself up with a witch’s best 
concocted dainties. Why could not she have 
allowed one of the other women to take the 
gruel in charge? Whatever else might be her 
gifts, Nature certainly never intended Zenobia 
for a cook. Or, if so, she should have med- 
dled only with the richest and spiciest dishes, 
and such as are to be tasted at banquets, 
between draughts of intoxicating wine. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


67 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE CONVALESCENT. 

As soon as my incommodities allowed me to 
think of past occurrences, I failed not to inquire 
what had become of the odd little guest whom 
Hollingsworth had been the medium of intro- 
ducing among us. It now appeared that poor 
Priscilla had not so literally fallen out of the 
clouds as we were at first inclined to suppose. 
A letter, which should have introduced her, 
had since been received from one of the city 
missionaries, containing a certificate of charac- 
ter, and an allusion to circumstances which, in 
the writer’s judgment, made it especially 
desirable that she should find shelter in our 
Community. There was a hint, not very 
intelligible, implying either that Priscilla had 
recently escaped from some particular peril or 
irksomeness of position, or else that she was 
still liable to this danger or difficulty, whatever 
it might be. We should ill have deserved the 
reputation of a benevolent fraternity, had we 
hesitated to entertain a petitioner in such need, 
and so strongly recommended to our kind- 
ness; not to mention, moreover, that the 
strange maiden had set herself diligently to 
work, and was doing good service with her 
needle. But a slight mist of uncertainty still 


68 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


floated about Priscilla, and kept her, as yet, 
from taking a very decided place among crea- 
tures of flesh and blood. 

The mysterious attraction, which, from her 
first entrance on our scene, she evinced for 
Zenobia, had lost nothing of its force. I often 
heard her footsteps, soft and low, accompany- 
ing the light but decided tread of the latter up 
the staircase, stealing along the passage-way 
by her new friend’s side, and pausing while 
Zenobia entered my chamber. Occasionally 
Zenobia would be a little annoyed by Pris- 
cilla’s too close attendance. In an authoritative 
and not very kindly tone, she would advise her 
to breathe the pleasant air in a walk, or to go 
with her work into the barn, holding out half 
a promise to come and sit on the hay with her, 
when at leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found 
but scanty requital for her love. Hollings- 
worth was likewise a great favorite with her. 
For several minutes together, sometimes, 
while my auditory nerves retained the suscept- 
ibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, 
pleasant murmur, ascending from the room 
below; and at last ascertained it to be Pris- 
cilla’s voice, babbling like a little brook to 
Hollingsworth. She talked more largely 
and freely with him than with Zenobia, toward 
whom, indeed, her feelings seemed not so 
much to be confidence as involuntary affection. 
I should have thought all the better of my own 
qualities, had Priscilla marked me out for the 
third place in her regards. But, though she 
appeared to like me tolerably well, I could 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


69 


never flatter myself with being distinguished 
by her as Hollingsworth and Zenobia were. 

One forenoon, during my convalescence, 
there came a gentle tap at my chamber-door. 
I immediately said, “Come in, Priscilla!” with 
an acute sense of the applicant’s identity. Nor 
was I deceived. It was really Priscilla, — a 
pale, large-eyed little woman (for she had gone 
far enough into her teens to be, at least, on the 
outer limit of girlhood), but much less wan 
than at my previous view of her, and far better 
conditioned both as to health and spirits. As 
I first saw her, she had reminded me of plants 
that one sometimes observes doing their best 
to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed 
court, where there is scanty soil, and never 
any sunshine. At present, though with no 
approach to bloom, there were indications that 
the girl had human blood in her veins. 

Priscilla came softly to my bed-side, and 
held out an article of snow-white linen, very 
carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not 
seem bashful, nor anywise embarrassed. My 
weakly condition, I suppose, supplied a medi- 
um in which she could approach me. 

“Do not you need this?” asked she. “I have 
made it for you.” 

It was a night-cap! 

“My dear Priscilla,” said I, smiling, “I 
never had on a night-cap in my life ! But per- 
haps it will be better for me to wear one, now 
that I am a miserable invalid. How admirably 
you have done it. No, no; I never can think 
of wearing such an exquisitely wrought night- 


70 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


cap as this, unless it be in the day-time, when 
I sit up to receive company.” 

“It is for use, not beauty,” answered Pris- 
cilla. “I could have embroidered it, and made 
it much prettier, if I pleased.” 

While holding up the night-cap, and admir- 
ing the fine needle-work, I perceived that Pris- 
cilla had a sealed letter, which she was waiting 
for me to take. It had arrived from the village 
post-office that morning. As I did not imme- 
diately offer to receive the letter, she drew it 
back, and held it against her bosom, with both 
hands clasped over it, in a way that had prob- 
ably grown habitual to her. Now, on turning 
my eyes from the night-cap to Priscilla, it 
forcibly struck me that her air, though not her 
figure, and the expression of her face, but not 
its features, had a resemblance to what I had 
often seen in a friend of mine, one of the most 
gifted women of the age. I cannot describe it. 
The points easiest to convey to the reader were, 
a certain curve of the shoulders, and a partial 
closing of the eyes, which seemed to look more 
penetratingly into my own eyes, through the 
narrowed apertures, than if they had been open 
at full width. It was a singular anomaly of 
likeness co-existing with perfect dissimilitude. 

“Will you give me the letter, Priscilla?” said 

I. 

She started, put the letter into my hand, and 
quite lost the look that had drawn my notice. 

“Priscilla,” I inquired, “did you ever see 
Miss Margaret Fuller?” 

“No,” she answered. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


71 


“Because/’ said I, “you reminded me of 
her, just now; and it happens, strangely 
enough, that this very letter is from her.” 

Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very 
much discomposed. 

‘‘I wish people would not fancy such odd 
things in me!” she said, rather petulantly. 
“How could I possibly make myself resemble 
this lady, merely by holding her letter in my 
hand?” 

“Certainly, Priscilla, it would puzzle me to 
explain it,” I replied; “nor do I suppose that 
the letter had anything to do with it. It was 
just a coincidence, nothing more.” 

She hastened out of the room, and this was 
the last that I saw of Priscilla until I ceased to 
be an invalid. 

Being much alone, during my recovery, I 
read interminably in Mr. Emerson’s Essays, 
the Dial, Carlyle’s works, George Sand’s ro- 
mances (lent me by Zenobia), and other books 
which one or another of the brethren or sister- 
hood had brought with them. Agreeing in 
little else, most of these utterances were like 
the cry of some solitary sentinel, whose station 
was on the outposts of the advance-guard of 
human progression; or, sometimes, the voice 
came sadly from among the shattered ruins of 
the past, but yet had a hopeful echo in the 
future. They were well adapted (better, at 
least, than any other intellectual products, the 
volatile essence of which had heretofore tinc- 
tured a printed page) to pilgrims like ourselves, 
whose present bivouac was considerably fur- 


72 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


ther into the waste of chaos than any mortal 
arm)’- of crusaders had ever marched before. 
Fourier’s works, also, in a series of horribly 
tedious volumes, attracted a good deal of my 
attention, from the analogy which I could not 
but recognize between his system and our own. 
There was far less resemblance, it is true, than 
the world chose to imagine, inasmuch as the 
two theories differed, as widely as the zenith 
from the nadir, in their main principles. 

I talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth, 
and translated, for his benefit, some of the pas- 
sages that chiefly impressed me. 

“When, as a consequence of human im- 
provement,” said I, “the globe shall arrive 
at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be 
converted into a particular kind of lemonade, 
such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier’s 
time. He calls it limonade a cedrc. It is posi- 
tively a fact! Just imagine the city-docks 
filled, every day, with a flood-tide of this de- 
lectable beverage!” 

“Why did not the Frenchman make punch 
of it, at once?” asked Hollingsworth. “The 
jack-tars would be delighted to go down in 
ships and do business in such an element. ” 

I further proceeded to explain, as well as I 
modestly could, several points of Fourier’s 
system, illustrating them with here and there 
a page or two, and asking Hollingsworth’s 
opinion as to the expediency of introducing 
these beautiful peculiarities into our own prac- 
tice. 

“Let me hear no more of it!” cried he, in 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


73 


utter disgust. “I never will forgive this fel- 
low! He has committed the unpardonable sin; 
for what more monstrous iniquity could the 
devil himself contrive than to choose the selfish 
principle, — the principle of all human wrong, 
the very blackness of man’s heart, the portion 
of ourselves which we shudder at, and which 
it is the whole aim of spiritual discipline to 
eradicate, — to choose it as the master- workman 
of his system? To seize u£on and foster what- 
ever vile, petty, sordid, filthy, bestial, and 
abominable corruptions have cankered into 
our nature, to be the efficient instruments of 
his infernal regeneration ! And his consum- 
mated Paradise, as he pictures it, would be 
worthy of the agency which he counts upon 
for establishing it. The nauseous villain!” 

“Nevertheless,” remarked I, “in considera- 
tion of the promised delights of his system, — 
so very proper, as they certainly are, to be 
appreciated by Fourier’s countrymen, — I can- 
not but wonder that universal France did not 
adopt his theory, at a moment’s warning. But 
is there not something very characteristic of 
his nation in Fourier’s manner of putting 
forth his views? He makes no claim to inspir- 
ation. He has not persuaded himself — as 
Swedenborg did, and as any other than a 
Frenchman would, with a mission of like im- 
portance to communicate — that he speaks with 
authority from above. Fie promulgates his 
system, so far as I can perceive, entirely on 
his own responsibility. He has searched out 
and discovered the whole counsel of the 

6 Blithedale 


74 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Almighty, in respect to mankind, past, pres- 
ent, and for exactly seventy thousand years to 
come, by the mere force and cunning of his 
individual intellect!” 

“Take the book out of my sight,” said Hol- 
lingsworth with great virulence of expression, 
“or, I tell you fairly, I shall fling it in the fire! 
And as for Fourier, let him make a Paradise, 
if he can, of Gehenna, where, as I conscien- 
tiously believe, he is floundering at this mo- 
ment!” 

“And bellowing, I suppose,” said I, — not 
that I felt any ill-wit toward Fourier, but 
merely wanted to give the finishing touch to 
Hollingsworth’s image, — “bellowing for the 
least drop of his beloved li?7io?iade a cedre!' 9 

There is but little profit to be expected in 
attempting to argue with a man who allows 
himself to declaim in this manner ; so I dropped 
the subject, and never took it up again. 

But had the system at which he was so en- 
raged combined almost any amount of human 
wisdom, spiritual insight, and imaginative 
beauty, I question whether Hollingsworth’s 
mind was in a fit condition to receive it. I 
began to discern that he had come among us 
actuated by no real sympathy with our feelings 
and our hopes, but chiefly because we were 
estranging ourselves from the world, with 
which his lonely and exclusive object in life 
had already put him at odds. Hollingsworth 
must have been originally endowed with a 
great spirit of benevolence, deep enough and 
warm enough to be the source of as much dis- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


75 


interested good as Providence often allows a 
human being the privilege of conferring upon 
his fellows. This native instinct yet lived 
within him. I myself had profited by it, in 
my necessity. It was seen, too, in his treat- 
ment of Priscilla. Such casual circumstances 
as were here involved would quicken his divine 
power of sympathy, and make him seem, while 
their influence lasted, the tenderest man and 
the truest friend on earth. But, by and by, 
you missed the tenderness of yesterday, and 
grew drearily conscious that Hollingsworth had 
a closer friend than ever you could be ; and 
this friend was the cold, spectral monster 
which he had himself conjured up, and on 
which he was wasting all the warmth of his 
heart, and of which, at last, — as these men of 
mighty purpose so invariably do, — he had 
grown to be the bond-slave. It was his philan- 
thropic theory. 

This was a result exceedingly sad to con- 
template, considering that it had been mainly 
brought about by the very ardor and exuber- 
ance of his philanthropy. Sad, indeed, but by 
no means unusual. He had taught his benev- 
olence to pour its warm tide exclusively 
through one channel ; so that there was noth- 
ing to spare for other great manifestations of 
love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of 
individual attachment, unless they could min- 
ister, in some way, to the terrible egotism 
which he mistook for an angel of God. Had 
Hollingsworth’s education been more enlarged, 
he might not so inevitably have stumbled inter 


76 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


this pit-fall. But this identical pursuit had 
educated him. He knew absolutely nothing, 
except in a single direction, where he had 
thought so energetically, and felt to such a 
depth, that, no doubt, the entire reason and 
justice of the universe appeared to be concen- 
trated thitherward. 

It is my private opinion that, at this period 
of his life, Hollingsworth was fast going mad; 
and, as with other crazy people (among whom 
I include humorists of every degree), it re- 
quired all the constancy of friendship to re- 
strain his associates from pronouncing him an 
intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon 
one string,— such multiform presentation of 
one idea!^ His specific object (of which he 
made the public more than sufficiently aware, 
through the medium of lectures and pamphlets) 
was to obtain funds for the construction of an 
edifice, with a sort of collegiate endowment. 
On this foundation, he purposed to devote him- 
self and a few disciples to the reform and men- 
tal culture of our criminal brethren. His vis- 
ionary edifice was Hollingsworth’s one castle 
in the air; it was the material type in which 
his philanthropic dream strove to embody it- 
self; and he made the scheme more definite, 
and caught hold of it the more strongly, and 
kept his clutch the more pertinaciously, by 
rendering it visible to the bodily eye. I have 
seen him, a hundred times, with a pencil and 
sheet of paper, sketching the facade, the side- 
view, or the rear of the structure, or planning 
the internal arrangements, as lovingly as 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


77 


another man might plan those of the projected 
home where he meant to be happy with his 
wife and children. I have known him to begin 
a model of the building with little stones, 
gathered at the brook-side, whither we had 
gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of 
haying-time. Unlike all other ghosts, his 
spirit haunted an edifice which, instead of be- 
ing time-worn, and full of storied love, and joy, 
and sorrow, had never yet come into existence. 

“Dear friend,” said I, once, to Hollingsworth 
before leaving my sick-chamber, “I heartily 
wish that I could make your schemes my 
schemes, because it would be so great a happi- 
ness to find myself treading the same path 
with you. But I am afraid there is not stuff 
in me stern enough for a philanthropist, — or 
not in this peculiar direction, — or, at all events, 
not solely in this. Can you bear with me, if 
such should prove to be the case?” 

“I will, at least, wait a while,” answered 
Hollingsworth, gazing at me sternly and 
gloomily. “But how can you be my life-long 
friend, except you strive with me toward the 
great object of my life?” 

Heaven forgive me ! A horrible suspicion 
crept into my heart, and strung the very core 
of it as with the fanges of an adder. I won- 
dered whether it were possible that Hollings- 
worth could have watched by my bed-side, 
with all that devoted care, only for the ulterior 
purpose of making me a proselyte to his views! 


78 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A MODERN ARCADIA. 

May-day — I forget whether by Zenobia’s sole 
decree, or by the unanimous vote of our Com- 
munity — had been declared a movable festival. 
It was deferred until the sun should have had 
a reasonable time to clear away the snow-drifts 
along the lee of the stone walls, and bring out 
a few of the readiest wild-flowers. On the 
forenoon of the substituted day, after admit- 
ting some of the balmy air into my chamber, 
I decided that it was nonsense and effeminacy 
to keep myself a prisoner any longer. So I 
descended to the sitting-room, and finding 
nobody there, proceeded to the barn, whence 
I had already heard Zenobia’s voice, and along 
with it a girlish laugh, which was not so cer- 
tainly recognizable. Arriving at the spot, it a 
little surprised me to discover that these merry 
out-breaks came from Priscilla. 

The two had been a Maying together. They 
had found anemones in abundance, housatonias 
by the handful, some columbines, a few long- 
stalked violets, and a quantity of white everlast- 
ing-flowers, and had filled up their basket 
with the delicate spray of shrubs and trees. 
None were prettier than the maple-twigs, the 
leaf of which looks like a scarlet bud in May, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


79 


and like a plate of vegetable gold in October. 
Zenobia, who showed no conscience in such 
matters, had also rifled a cherry-tree of one of 
its blossomed boughs, and, with all this vari- 
ety of sylvan ornament, had been decking out 
Priscilla. Being done with a good deal of 
taste, it made her look more charming than I 
should have thought possible, with my recol- 
lection of the wan, frost-nipped girl, as here- 
tofore described. Nevertheless, among those 
fragrant blossoms, and conspicuously, too, had 
been stuck a weed of evil odor and ugly aspect, 
which, as soon as I detected it, destroyed the 
effect of all the rest. There was a gleam of 
latent mischief — not to call it deviltry — in Ze- 
nobia’s eye, which seemed to indicate a slightly 
malicious purpose in the arrangement. 

As for herself, she scorned the rural buds and 
leaflets, and wore nothing but her invariable 
flower of the tropics. 

“What do you think of Priscilla now, Mr. 
Coverdale?” asked she, surveying her as a 
child does its doll. “Is not she worth a verse 
or two?” 

4 ‘ There is only one thing amiss, ’ ’ answered I. 

Zenobia laughed, and flung the malignant 
weed away. 

“Yes; she deserves some verses now, “ said 
I, “and from a better poet than myself. She 
is the very picture of the New England spring; 
subdued in tint, and rather cool, but with a 
capacity of sunshine, and bringing us a few 
Alpine blossoms, as earnest of something 
richer, though hardly more beautiful, here- 


80 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


after. The best type of her is one of those 
anemones. ” 

“What I find most singular in Priscilla, as 
her health improves,” observed Zenobia, “is 
her wildness. Such a quiet little body as she 
seemed, one would not have expected that. 
Why, as we strolled the woods together, I could 
hardly keep her from scrambling up the trees, 
like a squirrel ! She has never before known 
what it is to live in the free air, and so it 
intoxicates her as if she were sipping wine. 
And she thinks it such a paradise here, and all 
of us, particularly Mr. Hollingsworth and 
myself, such angels! It is quite ridiculous, 
and provokes one’s malice almost, to see a 
creature so happy, — especially a feminine crea- 
ture. ” 

“Th®y are always happier than male crea- 
tures,” said I. 

“You must correct that opinion, Mr. Cover- 
dale,” replied Zenobia, contemptuously, “or I 
shall think you lack the poetic insight. Did 
you ever see a happy woman in your life? Of 
course, I do not mean a girl, like Priscilla, and 
a thousand others, — for they are all alike, 
while on the sunny side of experience, — but a 
grown woman. How can she be happy, after 
discovering that fate has assigned her but one 
single event, which she must contrive to make 
the substance of her whole life? A man has 
his choice of innumerable events.” 

“A woman, I suppose,” answered I, “by 
constant repetition of her one event, may com- 
pensate for the lack of variety. ” 



“ I have seen him sketching the facade.” — Page 76. 

The Blithedale Romance. 














































1 mill .uj- 1 •• 

.. •!«,, UiUI „t 






THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


81 


“Indeed!” said Zenobia. 

While we were talking, Priscilla caught sight 
of Hollingsworth, at a distance, in a blue frock, 
and with a hoe over his shoulder, returning 
from the field. She immediately set out to 
meet him, running and skipping, with spirits 
as light as the breeze of the May morning, but 
with limbs too little exercised to be quite 
responsive; she clapped her hands, too, with 
great exuberance of gesture, as is the custom 
of young girls when their electricity over- 
charges them. But, all at once, midway to 
Hollingsworth, she paused, looked round about 
her, toward the river, the road, the woods, and 
back toward us, appearing to listen, as if she 
neard some one calling her name, and knew 
not precisely in what direction. 

“Have you bewitched her?” I exclaimed. 

“It is no sorcery of mine,” said Zenobia; 
“but I have seen the girl do that identical 
thing once or twice before. Can you imagine 
what is the matter with her?” 

“No; unless,” said I, “she has the gift of 
hearing those ‘airy tongues that syllable men’s 
names,’ which Milton tells about.” 

From whatever cause, Priscilla’s animation 
seemed entirely to have deserted her. She 
seated herself on a rock, and remained there 
until Hollingsworth came up; and when he 
took her hand and led her back to us, she rather 
resembled my original image of the wan and 
spiritless Priscilla "than the flowery May-queen 
of a few moments ago. These sudden trans- 
formations, only to be accounted for by an 

6 Blithedale 


82 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


extreme nervous susceptibility, always contin- 
ued to characterize the girl, though with dimin- 
ished frequency as her health progressively 
grew more robust. 

I was now on my legs again. My fit of ill- 
ness had been an avenue between two exist- 
ences ; the low-arched and darksome doorway, 
through which I crept out of a life of old con- 
ventionalisms, on my hands and knees, as it 
were, and gained admittance into the freer 
region that lay beyond. In this respect, it was 
like death. And, as with death, too, it was 
good to have gone through it. No otherwise 
could I have rid myself of a thousand follies, 
fripperies, prejudices, habits, and other such 
worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the 
crowd along the broad highway, giving them 
all one sordid aspect before noon-time, how- 
ever freshly they may have begun their pil- 
grimage in the dewy morning. The very sub- 
stance upon my bones had not been fit to live 
with in any better, truer, or more energetic 
mode than that to which I was accustomed. 
So it was taken off me and flung aside, like 
any other worn-out or unseasonable garment; 
and, after shivering a little while in my skele- 
ton, I began to be clothed anew, and much 
more satisfactorily than in my previous suit. 
In literal and physical truth, I was quite 
another man. I had a lively sense of the 
exultation with which the spirit will enter on 
the next stage of its eternal progress, after 
leaving the heavy burden of its mortality in an 
earthly grave, with as little concern for what 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


83 


may become of it as now affected me for the 
flesh which I had lost. 

Emerging into the genial sunshine, I half 
fancied that the labors of the brotherhood had 
already realized some of Fourier’s predictions. 
Their enlightened culture of the soil, and the 
virtues with which they sanctified their life, 
had begun to produce an effect upon the 
material world and its climate. In my new 
enthusiasm, man looked strong and stately, — 
and woman, O how beautiful! — and the earth a 
green garden, blossoming with many colored 
delights. Thus Nature, whose laws I had 
broken in various artificial ways, comported 
herself toward me as a strict but loving mother, 
who uses the rod upon her little boy for his 
naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, 
and some pretty playthings, to console the 
urchin for her severity. 

In the interval of my seclusion, there had 
been a number of recruits to our little army of 
saints and martyrs. They were mostly indi- 
viduals who had gone through such an experi- 
ence as to disgust them with ordinary pursuits, 
but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered 
so deeply, as to lose their faith in the better 
time to come. On comparing their minds one 
with another, they often discovered that this 
idea of a Community had been growing up, in 
silent and unknown sympathy, for years. 
Thoughtful, strongly-lined faces were among 
them; somber brows, but eyes that did not 
require spectacles, unless prematurely dimmed 
by the student's lamplight, and hair that sel- 


84 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


dom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded 
to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer 
of habits, and retaining nothing fluid in its 
possibilities, would have been absurdly out of 
place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, 
in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to 
our purpose ; for it would behold the morning 
radiance of its own spirit beaming over the 
very same spots of withered grass and barren 
sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. 
We had very young people with us, it is true, 
— downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens, 
and children of all heights above one’s knee; 
— but these had chiefly been sent hither for 
education, which it was one of the objects and 
methods of our institution to supply. Then 
we had boarders, from town and elsewhere, 
who lived with us in a familiar way, sympa- 
thized more or less in our theories, and some- 
times shared in our labors. 

On the whole, it was a society such as has 
seldom met together; nor, perhaps, could it 
reasonably be expected to hold together long. 
Persons of marked individuality — crooked 
sticks, as some of us might be called — are not 
exactly the easiest to bind up into a fagot. 
But, so long as our union should subsist, a man 
of intellect and feeling, with a free nature in 
him, might have sought far and near without 
finding so many points of attraction as would 
allure him hitherward. We were of all creeds 
and opinions, and generally tolerant of all, on 
every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems 
to me, was not affirmative, but negative. We 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


85 


had individually found one thing or another to 
quarrel with in our past life, and were pretty 
well agreed as to the inexpediency of lumber- 
ing along with the old system any further. As 
to what should be substituted, there was much 
less unanimity. We did not greatly care 
— at least, I never did — for the written consti- 
tution under which our millennium had com- 
menced. My hope was, that, between theory 
and practice, a true and available mode of life 
might be struck out, and that, even should we 
ultimately fail, the months or years spent in 
the trial would not have been wasted, either as 
regarded passing enjoyment, or the experience 
which makes men wise. 

Arcadians though we were, our costume bore 
no resemblance to the be-ribboned doublets, 
silk breeches and stockings, and slippers 
fastened with artificial roses, that distinguish 
the pastoral people of poetry and the stage. 
In outward show, I humbly conceive, we 
looked rather like a gang of beggars, or ban- 
ditti, than either a company of honest laboring 
men, or a conclave of philosophers. Whatever 
might be our points of difference, we all of us 
seemed to have come to Blithedale with the 
one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out 
our old clothes. Such garments as had an 
airing, whenever we strode a-field! Coats 
with high collars and with no collars, broad- 
skirted or swallow-tailed, and with the waist at 
every point between the hip and armpit; 
pantaloons of a dozen successive epochs, and 
greatly defaced at the knees by the humilia- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


tions of the wearer before his lady-love; — in 
short, we were a living epitome of defunct 
fashions, and the very raggedest presentiment 
of men who had seen better days. It was 
gentility in tatters. Often retaining a scholar- 
like or clerical air, you might have taken us 
for the denizons of Grub-street, intent on get- 
ting a comfortable livelihood by agricultural 
labor; or, Coleridge’s projected Pantisocracy 
in full experiment; or, Candide and his motley 
associates, at work in their cabbage-garden ; 
or anything else that was miserably out at 
elbows, and most clumsily patched in the rear. 
We might have been sworn comrades to Fal- 
stiff’s ragged regiment. Little skill as we 
boasted in other parts of husbandry, every 
mother’s son of us would have served admirably 
to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of 
the matter was, that the first energetic move- 
ment essential to one downright stroke of real 
labor was sure to put a finish to these poor 
habiliments. So we gradually flung them all 
aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey- 
woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, tp the 
plan recommended, I think, by Virgil , — “ Ara 
nudus; sere nudusd' — which, as Silas Foster 
remarked, when I translated the maxim, would 
be apt to astonish the women-folks. 

After a reasonable training, the yeoman life 
throve well with us. Our faces took the sun- 
burn kindly; our chests gained in compass, and 
our shoulders in breadth and squareness; our 
great brown fists looked as if they had never 
been capable of kid gloves. The plough, the 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


87 


hoe, the scythe, and the hay-fork, grew familiar 
to . our grasp. The oxen responded to our 
voices. We could do almost as fair a day’s 
work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly 
after it, and awake at daybreak with only a 
little stiffness of the joints, which was usually 
quite gone by breakfast-time. 

To be sure, our next neighbors pretended to 
be incredulous as to our real proficiency in the 
business which we had taken in hand. They 
told slanderous fables about our inability to 
yoke our own oxen, or to drive them a-field 
when yoked, or to release the poor brutes from 
their conjugal bond at night-fall. They had 
the face to say, too, that the cows laughed at 
our awkwardness at milking-time, and invari- 
ably kicked over the pails; partly in conse- 
quence of our putting the stool on the wrong 
side, and partly because, taking offense at the 
whisking of their tails, we were in the habit of 
• holding these natural fly-flappers with one 
hand, and milking with the other. They 
further averred that we hoed up whole acres 
of Indian corn and other crops, and drew the 
earth carefully about the weeds; and that we 
raised five hundred tufts of burdock, mistaking 
them for cabbages; and that, by dint of un- 
skilful planting, few of our seeds ever came up 
at all, or, if they did come up, it was stern- 
foremost ; and that we spent the better part of 
the month of June in reversing a field of 
beans, which had thrust themselves out of the 
ground in this unseemly way. They quoted 
it as nothing more than an ordinary occurrence 


88 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


for one or other of us to crop off two or three 
fingers, of a morning, by our clumsy use of 
the hay-cutter. Finally, and as an ultimate 
catastrophe, these mendacious rogues circu- 
lated a report that we communitarians were 
exterminated, to the last man, by severing 
ourselves asunder with the sweep of our own 
scythes! — and that the world had lost nothing 
by this little accident. 

But this was pure envy and malice on the 
part of the neighboring farmers. The peril of 
our new way of life was not lest we should fail 
in becoming practical agriculturists, but that 
we should probably cease to be anything else. 
While our enterprise lay all in theory, we had 
pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the 
spiritualization of labor. It was to be our 
form of prayer and ceremonial of worship. 
Each stroke of the hoe was to uncover some 
aromatic root of wisdom, heretofore hidden 
from the sun. Pausing in the field, to let the 
wind exhale the moisture from our foreheads, 
we were to look upward, and catch a glimpse 
into the far-off soul of truth. In this point of 
view, matters did not turn out quite so well 
as we anticipated. It is very true that, some- 
times gazing casually around me, out of the 
midst of my toil, I use to discern a richer 
picturesqueness in the visible scene of earth 
and sky. There was, at such moments, a 
novelty, an unwonted aspect, on the face of 
Nature, as if she had been taken by surprise 
and seen at unawares, with no opportunity to 
put off her real look, and assume the mask 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


89 


with which she mysteriously hides herself from 
mortals. But this was all. The clods of earth, 
which we so constantly belabored and turned 
over and over, were never etherealized into 
thought. Our thoughts, on the contrary, were 
fast becoming cloddish. Our labor symbolized 
nothing, and left us mentally sluggish in the 
dusk of the evening. Intellectual activity .is 
incompatible with any large amount of bodily 
exercise. The yeoman and the scholar — the 
yeoman and the man of finest moral culture, 
though not the man of sturdiest sense and in- 
tegrity — are too distinct individuals, and can 
never be melted or welded into one substance. 

Zenobia soon saw this truth, and gibed me 
about it, one evening, as Hollingsworth and I 
lay on the grass, after a hard day’s work. 

“I am afraid you did not make a song, to- 
day, while loading the hay-cart,” said she, ‘‘as 
Burns did, when he was reaping barley.” 

“Burns never made a song in haying- time,” 
I answered, very positively. “He was no poet 
while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet. ’ ’ 

“And, on the whole, which of the two char- 
acters do you like best?” asked Zenobia. “For 
I have an idea that you cannot combine them 
any better than Burns did. Ah, I see, in my 
mind’s eye, what sort of an individual you are 
to be, two or three years hence. Grim Silas 
Foster is your prototype, with his palm of sole- 
leather and his joints of rusty iron (which all 
through summer keep the stiffness of what he 
calls his winter rheumatize), and his brain of 
— I don’t know what his brain is made of. 


90 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


unless it be a Savoy cabbage ; but yours may 
be cauliflower, as a rather more delicate 
variety. Your physical man will be trans- 
muted into salt beef and fried pork, at the 
rate, I should imagine, of a pound and a half 
a day ; that being about the average which we 
find necessary in the kitchen. You will make 
your toilet for the day (still like this delightful 
Silas Foster) by rinsing your fingers and the 
front part of your face in a little tin-pan of wa- 
ter at the door-step, and teasing your hair with 
a wooden pocket-comb before a seven-by-nine- 
inch looking-glass. Your only pastime will be 
to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black 
stump of a pipe. ” 

“Pray, spare me!” cried I. “But the pipe 
is not Silas’ only mode of solacing himself 
with the weed.” 

“Your literature,” continued Zenobia, ap- 
parently delighted with her description, “will 
be the Farmer’s Almanac; for I observe our 
friend Foster never gets so far as the news- 
paper. When you happen to sit down, at odd 
moments, you will fall asleep, and make nasal 
proclamation of the fact, as he does; and in- 
variably you must be jogged out of a nap, after 
supper, by the future Mrs. Coverdale, and 
persuaded to go regularly to bed. And on 
Sundays, when you put on a blue coat with 
brass buttons, you will think of nothing else 
t.o do, but to go and lounge over the stone 
walls and rail fences, and stare at the corn 
growing. And you will look with a knowing 
eye at oxen, and will have a tendency to clam- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


91 


ber over into pig-sties, and feel of the hogs, 
and give a guess how much they will weigh af- 
ter you shall have stuck and dressed them. 
Already I have noticed you begin to speak 
through your nose, and with a drawl. Pray, 
if you really did make any poetry to-day, 
let us hear it in that kind of utterance!” 

“Coverdale has given up making verses 
now,” said Hollingsworth, who never had the 
slightest appreciation of my poetry. “Just 
think of him penning a sonnet with a fist like 
that! There is at least this good in a life of 
toil, that it takes the nonsense and fancy-work 
out of a man, and leaves nothing but what 
truly belongs to him. If a farmer can make 
poetry at the plough-tail, it must be because 
his nature insists on it; and if that be the case, 
let him make it, in Heaven’s name!” 

‘‘And how is it with you?” asked Zenobia, 
in a different voice; for she never laughed at 
Hollingsworth, as she often did at me. ‘‘You, 
I think, cannot have ceased to live a life of 
thought and feeling.” 

‘‘I have always been in earnest,” answered 
Hollingsworth. “I have hammered thought 
out of iron, after heating the iron in my heart! 
It matters little what my outward toil may be. 
Were I a slave at the bottom of a mine, I 
should keep the same purpose, the same faith 
in its ultimate accomplishment, that I do now. 
Miles Coverdale is not in earnest, either as a 
poet or a laborer. ” 

‘‘You give me a hard measure, Hollings- 
worth,” said I, a little hurt. ‘‘I have kept 


92 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


pace with you in the field; and my bones feel 
as if I had been in earnest, whatever may be 
the case with my brain!” 

‘‘I cannot conceive,” observed Zenobia, 
with great emphasis, — and, no doubt, she 
spoke fairly the feeling of the moment, — ‘‘I 
cannot conceive of being so continually as Mr. 
Coverdale is within the sphere of a strong and 
noble nature, without being strengthened and 
ennobled by its influence !” 

This amiable remark of the fair Zenobia 
confirmed me in what I had already begun to 
suspect, that Hollingsworth, like many other 
illustrious prophets, reformers, and philanthro- 
pists, was likely to make at least two proselytes 
among the women to one among the men. 
Zenobia and Priscilla! These, I believe (un- 
less my unworthy self might be reckoned for a 
third), were the only disciples of his mission; 
and I spent a great deal of time, uselessly, in 
trying to conjecture what Hollingsworth meant 
to do with them — and they with him ! 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


93 


CHAPTER IX. 

HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 

It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of men- 
tal occupation, to devote ourselves too exclu- 
sively to the study of individual men and 
women. If the person under examination be 
one’s self, the result is pretty certain to be dis- 
eased action of the heart, almost before we can 
snatch a second glance. Or, if we take the 
freedom to put a friend under our microscope, 
we thereby insulate him from many of his true 
relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably 
tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him 
very clumsily together again. What wonder, 
then, should we be frightened by the aspect of 
a monster, which, after all — though we can 
point to every feature of his deformity in the 
real personage, — may be said to have been 
created mainly by ourselves. 

Thus, as my conscience has often whispered 
me, I did Hollingsworth a great wrong by 
prying into his character; and am perhaps 
doing him as great a one, at this moment, by 
putting faith in the discoveries which I seemed 
to make. But I could not help it. Had I 
loved him less, I might have used him better. 
He — and Zenobia and Priscilla, both for their 
own sakes and as connected with him — were 


94 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


separated from the rest of the Community, to 
my imagination, and stood forth as the indices 
of a problem which it was my business to 
solve. Other associates had a portion of my 
time; other matters amused me; passing 
occurrences carried me along with them, while 
they lasted. But here was the vortex of my 
meditations around which they revolved, and 
whitherward they, too, continually tended. In 
the midst of cheerful society, I had often a 
feeling of loneliness. For it was impossible 
not to be sensible that, while these three char- 
acters figured so largely on my private theater, 
I — though probably reckoned as a friend by all 
— was at best but a secondary or tertiary per- 
sonage with either of them. 

I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been 
enough expressed. But it impressed me, more 
and more, that there was a stern and dreadful 
peculiarity in this man, such as could not prove 
otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of 
those who should be drawn into too intimate a 
connection with him. He was not altogether 
human. There was something else in Hol- 
lingsworth besides flesh and blood, and sym- 
pathies and affections, and celestial spirit. 

This is always true of those men who have 
surrendered themselves to an overruling pur- 
pose. It does not so much impel them from 
without, nor even operate as a motive power 
within, but grows incorporate with all they 
think and feel, and finally converts them into 
little else save that one principle. When such 
begins to be the predicament, it is not cow- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


95 


ardice, but wisdom, to avoid these victims. 
They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, 
no conscience. They will keep no friend, un- 
less he make himself the mirror of their pur- 
pose ; they will smite and slay you, and 
trample your dead corpse under foot, all the 
more readily, if you take the first step with 
them, and cannot take the second, and the 
third, and every other step of their terribly 
straight path. They have an idol, to which 
they consecrate themselves high-priest, and 
deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of what- 
ever is most precious; and never once seem to 
suspect — so cunning has the devil been with 
them — that this false deity, in whose iron fea- 
tures, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, 
they see only benignity and love, is but a spec- 
trum of the very priest himself, projected upon 
the surrounding darkness. And the higher 
and purer the original object, and the more 
unselfishly it may have been taken up, the 
slighter is the probability that they can be led 
to recognize the process by which godlike 
benevolence has been debased into all-devour- 
ing egotism. 

Of course, I am perfectly aware that the 
above statement is exaggerated, in the attempt 
to make it adequate. Professed philanthropists 
have gone far; but no originally good man, I 
presume, ever went quite so far as this. Let 
the reader abate whatever he deems fit. The 
paragraph may remain, however, both for its 
truth and its exaggeration, as strongly expres- 
sive of the tendencies which were really oper- 


96 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 

ative in Hollingsworth, and as exemplifying 
the kind of error into which my mode of obser- 
vation was calculated to lead me. The issue 
was, that in solitude I often shuddered at my 
friend. In my recollection of his dark and im- 
pressive countenance the features grew more 
sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in 
their depth and shadow, and more lurid in 
their light; the frown, that had merely flitted 
across his brow, seemed to have contorted it 
with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him 
again, I was often filled with remorse, when 
his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with 
the glow of a household fire that was burning 
in a cave. “He is a man, after all,” thought 
I; “his Maker’s own truest image, a philan- 
thropic man! — not that steel engine of the 
devil’s contrivance, a philanthropist!” But in 
my wood-walks, and in my silent chamber, the 
dark face frowned at me again. 

When a young girl comes within the sphere 
of such a man, she is as perilously situated as 
the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, 
the people used to expose to a dragon. If I 
had any duty whatever, in reference to Hol- 
lingsworth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla 
from that kind of personal worship which her 
sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints 
and heroes. It often requires but one smile 
out of the hero’s eyes into the girl’s or 
woman’s heart, to transform this devotion, 
from a sentiment of the highest approval and 
confidence, into passionate love. Now, Hol- 
lingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla, — more 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


97 


than upon any other person. If she thought 
him beautiful, it was no wonder. I often 
thought him so, with the expression of tender 
human care and gentlest sympathy which she 
alone seemed to have power to call out upon 
his features. Zenobia, I suspect, would have 
given her eyes, bright as they were, for such 
a look ; — it was the least that our poor Priscilla 
could do, to give her heart for a great many of 
them. There was the more danger of this, 
inasmuch as the footing on which we all asso- 
ciated at Blithedale was widely different from 
that of conventional society. While inclining 
us to the soft affections of the golden age, it 
seemed to authorize any individual, of either 
sex, to 'fall in love with any other, regardless 
of what would elsewhere be judged suitable 
and prudent. Accordingly, the tender passion 
was very rife among us, in various degrees of 
mildness or virulence, but mostly passing away 
with the state of things that had given it 
origin. This was all well enough; but, fora 
girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to 
jostle one another in their love of a man like 
Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child’s play. 

Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes 
thought myself, nothing would have interested 
me more than to witness the play of passions 
that must thus have been evolved. But, in 
honest truth I would really have gone far to 
save Priscilla, at least, from the catastrophe in 
which such a drama would be apt to terminate. 

Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty 
girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, 

7 Blithedale 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and daily putting on some new charm, which 
you no sooner became sensible of than you 
thought it worth all that she had previously 
possessed. So unformed, vague, and without 
substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as 
if we could see Nature shaping out a woman 
before our very eyes, and yet had only a more 
reverential sense of the mystery of a woman’s 
soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was 
pale, — to-day, it had a bloom. Priscilla’s 
smile, like a baby’s first one, was a wondrous 
novelty. Her imperfections and shortcom- 
ings affected me with a kind of playful pathos, 
which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation 
as ever I experienced. After she had been a 
month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits 
waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in 
a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her 
to far more bodily activity than she had yet 
strength to endure. She was very fond of 
playing with the other girls out of doors. 
There is hardly another sight in the world so 
pretty as that of a company of young girls, 
almost women grown, at play, and so giving 
themselves up to their airy impulse that their 
tiptoes barely touch the ground. 

Girls are incomparably wilder and more 
effervescent than boys, more untamable, and 
regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shift- 
ing variety, breaking continually into new 
modes of fun, yet with a harmonious propriety 
through all. Their steps, their voices, appear 
free as the wind, but keep consonance with a 
strain of music inaudible to us. Young men 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


99 


and boys, on the other hand, play, according 
to recognized law, old, traditionary games, 
permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with 
scope enough for the outbreak of savage in- 
stincts. For, young or old, in play or in ear- 
nest, man is prone to be a brute. 

Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous 
young girl run a race, with her head thrown 
back, her limbs moving more briskly than they 
need, and an air between that of a bird and a 
young colt. But Priscilla’s peculiar charm, in 
a foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity 
with which she ran. Growing up without ex- 
ercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had 
never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. 
Setting buoyantly forth, therefore, as if no 
rival less swift than Atalanta could compete 
with her, she ran falteringly, and often tum- 
bled on the grass. Such an incident — though 
it seems too slight to think of — was a thing to 
laugh at, but which brought the water into 
one’s eyes, and lingered in the memory after 
far greater joys and sorrows were swept out of 
it, as antiquated trash. Priscilla’s life, as I 
beheld it, was full of trifles that affected me in 
just this way. 

When she had come to be quite at home 
among us, I used to fancy that Priscilla played 
more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, 
than any other girl in the Community. For 
example, I once heard Silas Foster, in a very 
gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse- 
shoes round Priscilla’s neck and chain her to a 
post, because she, with some other young peo- 

LrfC 


100 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


pie, had clambered upon a load of hay, and 
caused it to slide off the cart. How she made 
her peace I never knew, but very soon after- 
ward I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands 
round Priscilla’s waist, swinging her to and 
fro, and finally depositing her on one of the 
oxen, to take her first lessons in riding. She 
met with terrible mishaps in her efforts to 
milk a cow; she let the poultry into the gar- 
den; she generally spoiled whatever part of 
the dinner she took in charge ; she broke crock- 
ery ; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the 
well ; and — except with her needle and those 
wooden instruments for purse-making — was 
as unserviceable a member of society as any 
young lady in the land. There was no other 
sort of efficiency about her. Yet everybody 
was kind to Priscilla: everybody loved her and 
laughed at her to her face, and did not laugh 
behind her back ; everybody would have given 
her half of his last crust, or the bigger share 
of his plum-cake. These were pretty certain 
indications that we were all conscious of a 
pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered 
her not quite able to look after her own inter- 
ests. or fight her battle with the world. And 
Hollingsworth — perhaps because he had been 
the means of introducing Priscilla to her new 
abode — appeared to recognize her as his own 
especial charge. 

Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits 
often made me sad. She seemed to me like a 
butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, 
and mistaking it for a broad and eternal sum- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


101 


mer. We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter 
accountability than sorrow; — it must show 
good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes 
back drearily. Priscilla’s gayety, moreover, 
was of a nature that showed me how delicate 
an instrument she was, and what fragile harp- 
strings were her nerves. As they made sweet 
music at the airest touch, it would require but 
a stronger one to burst them all asunder. 
Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason with 
her, and pursuade her not to be so joyous, 
thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly 
upon her fund of happiness, it would last the 
longer. I remember doing so, one summer 
evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, 
like Goldsmith’s old folks under the village 
thorn-tree, while the young people were at 
their sports. 

“What is the use or sense of being so very 
gay?” I said to Priscilla, while she was taking 
breath, after a great frolic. “I love to see a 
sufficient cause for everything; and I can see 
none for this. Pray tell me now, what kind of 
a world you imagine this to be, which you are 
so merry in. ’’ 

“I never think about it at all,” answered 
Priscilla, laughing. “But this I am sure of, 
that it is a world where everybody is kind to 
me, and where I love everybody. My heart 
keeps dancing within me, and all the foolish 
things which you see me do are only the 
motions of my heart. How can I be dismal, 
if my heart will not let me?’’ 

“Have you nothing dismal to remember?’’ I 


102 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


suggested. “If not, then, indeed, you are 
very fortunate!” 

“Ah!” said Priscilla, slowly. 

And then came that unintelligible gesture, 
when she seemed to listen to a distant voice. 

“For my part,” I continued, beneficently 
seeking to overshadow her with my own 
somber humor, “my past life has been a tire- 
some one enough; yet I would rather look 
backward ten times than forward once. For, 
little as we know of our life to come, we may 
be very sure, for one thing, that the good we 
aim at will not be attained. People never do 
get just the good they seek. If it come at all, 
it is something else, which they never dreamed 
of,, and did not particularly want. Then, 
again, we may rest certain that our friends of 
to-day will not be our friends of a few years 
hence; but, if we keep one of them, it will be 
at the expense of the others; and, most prob- 
ably, we shall keep none. To be sure, there 
are more to be had; but who cares about 
making a new set of friends, even should they 
be better than those around us?” 

“Not I!” said Priscilla. “I will live and die 
with these!” 

“Well; but let the future go,” resumed I. 
“As for the present moment, if we could look 
into the hearts where we wish to be most 
valued, what should you expect to see? One’s 
own likeness, in the innermost, holiest niche? 
Ah! I don’t know! It may not be there at all. 
It may be a dusty image, thrust aside into a 
corner, and by and by to be flung out of doors, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


103 


where any foot may trample upon it. If not 
to-day, then to-morrow! And so, Priscilla, I 
do not see much wisdom in being so very 
merry in this kind of a world.” 

It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly 
life to hive up the bitter honey which I here 
offered to Priscilla. And she rejected it! 

‘‘I don’t believe one word of what you say!” 
she replied, laughing anew. ‘‘You made me 
sad, for a minute, by talking about the past; 
but the past never comes back again. Do we 
dream the same dream twice? There is nothing 
else that I am afraid of.” 

So away she ran, and fell down on the green 
grass, as it was often her luck to do, but got 
up again, without any harm. 

‘‘Priscilla, Priscilla!” cried Hollingsworth, 
who was sitting on the doorstep; ‘‘you had 
better not run any more to-night. You will 
weary yourself too much. And do not sit down 
out of doors, for there is a heavy dew begin- 
ning to fall.” 

At his first word she went and sat down un- 
der the porch, at Hollingsworth’s feet, entirely 
contented and happy. What charm was there 
in his rude massiveness that so attracted and 
soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to 
me, who have always been curious in such 
matters, that Priscilla’s vague and seemingly 
causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that 
with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, 
before they begin to suspect what is going on 
within them. It transports them to the seventh 
heaven; and, if you ask what brought them 


104 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


thither, they neither can tell nor care to learn, 
but cherished an ecstatic faith that there shall 
abide forever. 

Zenobia was in the door-way, not far from 
Hollingsworth. She gazed at Priscilla in a 
very singular way. Indeed, it was a sight 
worth gazing at, and a beautiful sight, too, as 
the fair girl sat at the feet of that dark, power- 
ful figure. Her air, while perfectly modest, 
delicate, and virgin-like, denoted her as swayed 
by Hollingsworth, attracted to him, and uncon- 
sciously seeking to rest upon his strength. I 
could not turn away my own eyes, but hoped 
that nobody, save Zenobia and myself, were 
witnessing this picture. It is before me now, 
with the evening twilight a little deepened by 
the dusk of memory. 

“Come hither, Priscilla,” said Zenobia. “I 
have something to say to you. ” 

She spoke in little more than a whisper. 
But it is strange how expressive of moods a 
whisper may often be. Priscilla felt at once 
that something had gone wrong. 

“Are you angry with me?” she asked, rising 
slowly, and standing before Zenobia in a 
drooping attitude. “What have I done? I 
hope you are not angry!” 

“No, no, Priscilla!” said Hollingsworth, 
smiling. “I will answer for it, she is not. 
You are the one little person in the world with 
whom nobody can be angry!” 

“Angry with you, child? What a silly idea!” 
exclaimed Zenobia, laughing. “No, indeed! 
But, my dear Priscilla, you are getting to be 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


105 


so very pretty that you absolutely need a 
duenna; and, as I am older than you, and have 
had my own little experience of life, and think 
myself exceedingly sage, I intend to fill the 
place of a maiden-aunt. Every day, I shall 
give you a lecture, a quarter of an hour in 
length, on the morals, manners and proprieties, 
of social life. When our pastoral shall be quite 
played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom may 
stand you in good stead.” 

“I am afraid you are angry with me!” 
repeated Priscilla, sadly; for, while she seemed 
as impressible as wax, the girl often showed a 
persistency in her own ideas as stubborn as it 
was gentle. 

“Dear me, what can I say to the child!’ 
cried Zenobia, in a tone of humorous vexation. 
“Well, well; since you insist on my being 
angry, come to my room, this moment, and let 
me beat you!” 

Zenobia bade Hollingsworth good-night very 
sweetly, and nodded to me with a smile. But, 
just as she turned aside with Priscilla into the 
dimness of the porch, I caught another glance 
at her countenance. It would have made the 
fortune of a tragic actress, could she have bor- 
rowed it for the moment when she fumbles in 
her bosom for the concealed dagger, or the 
exceedingly sharp bodkin, or mingles the rats- 
bane in her lover’s bowl of wine or her rival’s 
cup of tea. Not that I in the least anticipated 
any such catastrophe, — it being a remarkable 
truth that custom has in no one point a greater 
sway than over our modes of wreaking our 

8 Blithe dale 


106 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


wild passions. And, besides, had we been in 
Italy, instead of New England, it was hardly 
yet a crisis for the dagger or the bowl. 

It often amazed me, however, that Hollings- 
worth should show himself so recklessly ten- 
der toward Priscilla, and never once seem to 
think of the effect which it might have upon 
her heart. But the man, as I have endeavored 
to explain, was thrown completely off his moral 
balance, and quite bewildered as to his personal 
relations, by his great excrescence of a phi- 
lanthropic scheme. I used to see, or fancy, 
indications that he was not altogether obtuse 
to Zenobia’s influence as a woman. No doubt, 
however, he had a still more exquisite enjoy- 
ment of Priscilla’s silent sympathy with his 
purposes, so unalloyed with criticism, and 
therefore more grateful than any intellectual 
approbation, which always involves a possible 
reserve of latent censure. A man — poet, 
prophet, or whatever he may be — readily per- 
suades himself of his right to all the worship 
that is voluntarily tendered. In requital of so 
rich benefits as he was to confer upon man- 
kind, it would have been hard to deny Hol- 
lingsworth the simple solace of a young girl’s 
heart, which he held in his hand, and smelled 
too, like a rosebud. But what if, while press- 
ing out its fragrance, he should crush the ten- 
der rosebud in his grasp ! 

As for Zenobia, I saw no occasion to give 
myself any trouble. With her native strength, 
and her experience of the world, she could not 
be supposed to need any help of mine. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


107 


Nevertheless, I was really generous enough to 
feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia. 
With all her faults (which might have been a 
great many, besides the abundance that I 
knew of), she possessed noble traits, and a 
heart which must at least have been valuable 
while new. And she seemed ready to fling it 
away as uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I 
could not but suspect that, if merely at play 
with Hollingsworth, she was sporting with a 
power which she did not fully estimate. Or, if 
in earnest, it might chance, between Zenobia’s 
passionate force, and his dark, self-delusive 
egotism, to turn out such earnest as would 
develop itself in some sufficiently tragic catas- 
trophe, though the dagger and the bowl should 
go for nothing in it. 

Meantime, the gossip of the Community set 
them down as a pair of lovers. They took 
walks together, and were not seldom encoun- 
tered in the wood-paths; Hollingsworth deeply 
discoursing, in tones solemn and sternly 
pathetic. Zenobia, with a rich glow on her 
cheeks, and her eyes softened from their ordi- 
nary brightness, looked so beautiful, that, had 
her companion been ten times a philanthropist, 
it seemed impossible but that one glance 
should melt him back into a man. Oftener 
than anywhere else, they went to a certain 
point on the slope of a pasture, commanding 
nearly the whole of our own domain, besides a 
view of the river, and an airy prospect of many 
distant hills. The bond of our Community was 
such, that the members had the privilege of 


108 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


building cottages for their own residence within 
our precincts, thus laying a hearth-stone and 
fencing in a home private and peculiar to all 
desirable extent, while yet the inhabitants 
should continue to share the advantages of an 
associated life. It was inferred that. Hollings- 
worth and Zenobia intended to rear their dwell- 
ing on this favorite spot. 

I mentioned these rumors to Hollingsworth, 
in a playful way. 

“Had you consulted me,” I went on to 
observe, “I should have recommended a site 
further to the left, just a little withdrawn 
into the wood, with two or three peeps at the 
prospect, among the trees. You will be in the 
shady vale of years, long before you can raise 
any better kind of shade around your cottage, 
if you build it on this bare slope.” 

“But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the 
world,” said Hollingsworth, “that it may take 
example and build many another like it. 
Therefore, I mean to set it on the open hill- 
side. ’ * 

Twist these words how I might, they offered 
no very satisfactory import. It seemed hardly 
probable that Hollingsworth should care about 
educating the public taste in the department of 
cottage architecture, desirable as such improve- 
ment certainly was. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


109 


CHAPTER X. 

A VISITOR FROM TOWN. 

Hollingsworth and I — we had been hoeing 
potatoes, that forenoon, while the rest of the 
fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of 
the farm — sat under a clump of maples, eating 
our eleven o’clock lunch, when we saw a 
stranger approaching along the edge of the 
field. He had admitted himself from the road- 
side through a turnstile, and seemed to have a 
purpose of speaking with us. 

And, by the by, we were favored with many 
visits at Blithedale, especially from people 
who sympathized with our theories, and per- 
haps held themselves ready to unite in our 
actual experiment as soon as there should 
appear a reliable promise of its success. It 
was rather ludicrous, indeed — (to me, at least, 
whose enthusiasm had insensibly been exhaled, 
together with the perspiration of many a hard 
day’s toil), — it was absolutely funny, therefore, 
to observe what a glory was shed about our 
life and labors, in the imagination of these 
longing proselytes. In their view, we were as 
poetical as Arcadians, besides being as practical 
as the hardest-fisted husbandmen in Massachu- 
setts. We did not, it is true, spend much time 
in piping to our sheep, or warbling our inno- 


110 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


cent loves to the sisterhood. But they gave us 
credit for imbuing the ordinary rustic occupa- 
tions with a kind of religious poetry, insomuch 
that our very cow-vards and pig-sties were as 
delightfully fragrant as a flower-garden. 
Nothing used to please me more than to see 
one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe, 
as they were very prone to do, and set to work 
with a vigor that perhaps carried him through 
about a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are 
wonderfully soon satisfied, in this day of shame- 
ful bodily enervation, when, from one end of 
life to the other, such multitudes never taste 
the sweet weariness that follows accustomed 
toil. I seldom saw the new enthusiasm that 
did not grow as flimsy and flaccid as the prose- 
lyte’s moistened shirt-collar, with a quarter of 
an hour’s active labor under a July sun. 

But the person now at hand had not at all the 
air of one of these amiable visionaries. He 
was an elderly man, dressed rather shabbily, 
yet decently enough, in a gray frock-coat, faded 
toward a brown hue, and wore a broad- 
brimmed white hat, of the fashion of several 
years gone by. His hair was perfect silver, 
without a dark thread in the whole of it ; his 
nose, though it had a scarlet tip, by no means 
indicated the jollity of which a red nose is the 
generally admitted symbol. He was a sub- 
dued, undemonstrative old man, who would 
doubtless drink a glass of liquor, now and then, 
and probably more than was good for him ; — 
not, however, with a purpose of undue exhil- 
aration, but in the hope of bringing his spirits 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Ill 


up to the ordinary level of the world’s cheer- 
fulness. Drawing nearer, there was a shy look 
about him, as if he were ashamed of his pov- 
erty; or, at any rate, for some reason or other, 
would rather have us glance at him side-long 
than take full front view. He had a queer 
appearance of hiding himself behind the path 
on his left eye. 

“I know this old gentleman,” said I to Hol- 
lingsworth, as we sat observing him; ‘‘that is, 
I have met him a hundred times in town, and 
have often amused my fancy with wondering 
what he was before he came to be what he is. 
He haunts restaurants and such places, and has 
an odd way of lurking in corners or getting 
behind a door, whenever practicable, and hold- 
ing out his hand, with some little article in it 
which he wishes you to buy. The eye of the 
world seems to trouble him, although he neces- 
sarily lives so much in it. I never expected to 
see him in an open field. ” 

‘‘Have you learned anything of his history?” 
asked Hollingsworth. 

“Not a circumstance,” I answered; “but 
there must be something curious in it. I take 
him to be a harmless sort of a person, and a 
tolerably honest one; but his manners, being 
so furtive, remind me of those of a rat, — a rat 
without the mischief, the fierce eye, the teeth 
to bite with, or the desire to bite. See, now! 
He means to skulk along that fringe of bushes, 
and approach us on the other side of our clump 
of maples. ” 

We soon heard the old man’s velvet tread on 


112 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


the grass, indicating that he had arrived within 
a few feet of where we sat. 

“Good-morning, Mr. Moodie, ” said Hollings- 
worth, addressing the stranger as an acquaint- 
ance; “you must have had a long and tiresome 
walk from the city. Sit down, and take a mor- 
sel of our bread and cheese.” 

The visitor made a grateful little murmur of 
acquiescence, and sat down in a spot some- 
what removed ; so that, glancing round, I could 
see his gray pantaloons and dusty shoes, while 
his upper part was mostly hidden behind the 
shrubbery. Nor did he come forth from this 
retirement during the whole of the interview 
that followed. We handed him such food as 
we had, together with a brown jug of molasses 
and water (would that it had been brandy, or 
something better, for the sake of his chill old 
heart!), like priests offering dainty sacrifice to 
an enshrined and invisible idol. I have no idea 
that he really lacked sustenance; but it was 
quite touching, nevertheless, to hear him nib- 
bling away at our crusts. 

“Mr. Moodie,” said I, “do you remember 
selling me one of these very pretty little silk 
purses, of which you seem to have a monopoly 
in the market? I keep it to this day, I can 
assure you. ’ ’ 

“Ah, thank you,” said our guest. “Yes, Mr. 
Coverdale, I used to sell a good many of those 
little purses.” 

He spoke languidly, and only those few words, 
like a watch with an inelastic spring, that just 
ticks a moment or two, and stops again. He 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


113 


seemed a very forlorn old man. In the want- 
onness of youth, strength, and comfortable con- 
dition, — making my prey of people’s individu- 
alities, as my custom was, — I tried to identify 
my mind with the old fellow’s and take his 
view of the world, as if looking through a 
smoke-blackened glass at the sun. It robbed 
the landscape of all its life. Those pleasantly 
swelling slopes of our farm, descending toward 
the wide meadows, through which sluggishly 
circled the brimful tide of the Charles, bathing 
the long sedges on its hither and further shores; 
the broad, sunny gleam over the winding 
water; that peculiar picturesqueness of the 
scene where capes and headlands put them- 
selves boldly forth upon the perfect level of 
the meadow, as into a green lake, with inlets 
between the promontories;. the shadowy wood- 
land, with twinkling showers of light falling 
into its depths; the sultry heat- vapor, which 
rose everywhere like incense, and in which my 
soul delighted, as indicating so rich a fervor in 
the passionate day, and in the earth which was 
burning with its love ; — I beheld all these things 
as through old Moodie’s eyes. When my eyes 
are dimmer than they have yet come to be, I 
will go thither again, and see if I did not catch 
the tone of his mind aright, and if the cold and 
lifeless tint of his perceptions be not then 
repeated in my own. 

Yet it was unaccountable to myself, the 
interest that I felt in him. 

“Have you any objection,” said I, “to tell- 
ing me who made those little purses?” 

8 Blithedale 


114 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“Gentlemen have often asked me that,” said 
Moodie, slowly; “but I shake my head, and 
say little or nothing, and creep out of the way 
as well as I can. I am a man of few words ; 
and if gentlemen were to be told one thing, 
they would be very apt, I suppose, to ask me 
another. But it happens, just now, Mr. 
Coverdale, that you can tell me more about 
the maker of those little purses than I can tell 
you. ” 

“Why do you trouble him with needless 
questions, Coverdale?” interrupted Hollings- 
worth. ‘‘You must have known, long ago, 
that it was Priscilla. And so, my good friend, 
you have come to see her? Well, I am glad 
of it. You will find her altered very much for 
the better, since that winter evening when 
you put her into m,y charge. Why, Priscilla 
has a bloom in her cheeks, now!’ 

“Bias my pale little girl a bloom? ” repeated 
Moodie, with a kind of slow wonder. “Pris- 
cilla with a bloom in her cheeks! Ah, I am 
afraid I shall not know my little girl. And 
is she happy?” 

“Just as happy as a bird,” answered Hol- 
lingsworth. 

“Then, gentlemen,” said our guest, appre- 
hensively, ‘‘I don’t think it well for me to go 
any further. I crept hitherward only to ask 
about Priscilla; and now that you have told me 
such good news, perhaps I can do no better 
than to creep back again. If she were to see 
this old face of mine, the child would remem- 
ber some very sad times which we have spent 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


115 


together. Some very sad times, indeed! She 
has forgotten them, I know,— them and me, — 
else she could not be so happy, nor have a 
bloom in her cheeks. Yes — yes — yes,” con- 
tinued he, still with the same torpid utterance ; 
‘‘with many thanks to you, Mr. Hollings- 
worth, I will creep back to town again.” 

‘‘You shall do no such thing, Mr. Moodie,” 
said Hollingsworth, bluffly. “Priscilla often 
speaks of you ; and if there lacks anything to 
make her cheeks bloom like two damask roses, 
I’ll venture to say it is just the sight of your 
face. Come, — we will go and find her.” 

‘‘Mr. Hollingsworth!” said the old man, in 
his hesitating way. 

‘‘Well,” answered Hollingsworth. 

‘‘Has there been any call for Priscilla?” 
asked Moodie ; and though his face was hid- 
den from us, his tone gave a sure indication of 
the mysterious nod and wink with which he 
put the question. ‘‘You know, I think, sir, 
what I mean.” 

‘‘I have not the remotest suspicion what you 
mean, Mr. Moodie,” replied Hollingsworth; 
‘‘nobody, to my knowledge, has called for 
Priscilla, except yourself. But, come; we are 
losing time, and I have several things to say 
to you by the way.” 

‘‘And, Mr. Hollingsworth’” repeated 
Moodie. 

‘‘Well, again!” cried my friend, rather 
impatiently. ‘‘What now?” 

‘‘There is a lady here,” said the old man; 
and his voice lost some of its wearisome hesi- 


116 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


tation. “You will account it a very strange 
matter for me to talk about; but I chanced 
to know this lady, when she was but a little 
child. If I am rightly informed, she has 
grown to be a very fine woman, and makes a 
brilliant figure in the world, with her beauty, 
and her talents, and her noble way of spend- 
ing her riches. I should recognize this lady, 
so people tell me, by a magnificent flower in 
her hair. ” 

“What a rich tinge it gives to his colorless 
ideas, when he speaks of Zenobia!” I whis- 
pered to Hollingsworth. “But how can there 
possibly be any interest or connecting link 
between him and her?’’ 

“The old man, for years past,” whispered 
Hollingsworth, “has been a little out of his 
right mind, as you probably see. ’ ’ 

“What I would inquire,” resumed Moodie, 
“is, whether this beautiful lady is kind to my 
poor Priscilla.” 

“Very kind,” said Hollingsworth. 

“Does she love her?” asked Moodie. 

“It should seem so,” answered my friend. 
“They are always together.” 

“Like a gentlewoman and her maid-servant, 
I fancy?” suggested the old man. 

There was something so singular in his way 
of saying this, that I could not resist the 
impulse to turn quite round, so as to catch a 
glimpse of his face, almost imagining that I 
should see another person than old Moodie. 
But there he sat, with the patched side of his 
face toward me. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


117 


“Like an elder and younger sister, rather,” 
replied Hollingsworth. 

“Ah!” said Moodie, more complacently, — 
for his latter tones had harshness and acidity 
in them, — “it would gladden my old heart to 
witness that. If one thing would make me 
happier than another, Mr. Hollingsworth, it 
would be to see that beautiful lady holding my 
little girl by the hand.” 

“Come along,” said Hollingsworth, “and 
perhaps you may.” 

After a little more delay on the part of our 
freakish visitor, they set forth together, old 
Moodie keeping a step or two behind Hollings- 
worth, so that the latter could not very con- 
veniently look him in the face. I remained 
under the tuft of maples, doing my utmost to 
draw an inference from the scene that had just 
passed. In spite of Hollingsworth’s off-hand 
explanation, it did not strike me that our 
strange guest was really beside himself, but 
only that his mind needed screwing up, like an 
instrument long out of tune, the strings of 
which have ceased to vibrate smartly and 
sharply. Methought it would be profitable 
for us, projectors of a happy life, to welcome 
this old gray shadow, and cherish him as one 
of us, and let him creep about our domain, in 
order that he might be a little merrier for our 
sakes, and we, sometimes, a little sadder for 
his. Human destinies look ominous without 
some perceptible intermixture of the sable or 
the gray. And then, too, should any of our 
fraternity grow feverish with an over-exulting 


118 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


sense of prosperity, it would be a sort of cool- 
ing- regimen to slink off into the woods, and 
spend an hour, or a day, or as many days as 
might be requisite to the cure, in uninter- 
rupted communion with this deplorable old 
Moodie ! 

Going homeward to dinner, I had a glimpse 
of him, behind the trunk of a tree, gazing 
earnestly toward a particular window of the 
farm-house; and, by and by, Priscilla appeared 
at this window, playfully drawing along Ze- 
nobia, who looked as bright as the very day 
that was blazing down upon us, only not, by 
many degrees, so well advanced toward her 
noon. I was convinced that this pretty sight 
must have been purposely arranged by Pris- 
cilla for the old man to see. But either the 
girl held her too long, or her fondness was 
resented as too great a freedom ; for Zenobia 
suddenly put Priscilla decidedly away, and 
gave her a haughty look, as from a mistress to 
a dependent. Old Moodie shook his head ; and 
again and again I saw him shake it, as he 
withdrew along the road; and, at the last point 
whence the farm-house was visible, he turned, 
and shook his uplifted staff. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


119 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE WOOD-PATH. 

Not long after the preceding incident, in 
order to get the ache of too constant labor out 
of my bones, and to relieve my spirit of the 
irksomeness of a settled routine, I took a hol- 
iday. It was my purpose to spend it, all alone, 
from breakfast-time till twilight, in the 
deepest wood-seclusion that lay anywhere 
around us. Though fond of society, I was so 
constituted as to need these occasional retire- 
ments, even in a life like that of Blithedale, 
which was itself characterized by a remoteness 
from the world. Unless renewed by a yet 
further withdrawal toward the inner circle of 
self-communion, I lost the better part of my 
individuality. My thoughts became of little 
worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a 
tuft of moss (a thing whose life is in the 
shade, the rain, or the noontide dew), crum- 
bling in the sunshine, after long expectance of 
a shower. So, with my heart full of a drowsy 
pleasure, and cautious not to dissipate my 
mood by previous intercourse with any one. 
I hurried away, and was soon pacing a wood- 
path, arched over head with boughs, and 
dusky-brown beneath my feet. 

At first, I walked very swiftly, as if the 


120 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


heavy flood-tide of social life were roaring at 
my heels, and would outstrip and overwhelm 
me, without all the better diligence in my 
escape. But, threading the more distant 
windings of the track, I abated my pace, and 
looked about me for some side-aisle, that 
should admit me into the innermost sanctuary 
of this green cathedral, just as, in human 
acquaintanceship, a casual opening sometimes 
lets us, all of a sudden, into the long-sought 
intimacy of a mysterious heart. So much was 
I absorbed in my reflections, — or, rather, in my 
mood, the substance of which was as yet too 
shapeless to be called thought, — that footsteps 
rustled on the leaves, and a figure passed me 
by, almost without impressing either the 
sound or sight upon my consciousness. 

A moment afterward. I heard a voice at a 
little distance behind me, speaking so sharply 
and impertinently that it made a complete 
discord with my spiritual state, and caused the 
latter to vanish as abruptly as when you thrust 
a finger into a soap-bubble. 

“Hallo, friend!” cried this most unseason- 
able voice. “Stop a moment, I say! I must 
have a word with you!” 

I turned about, in a humor ludicrously irate. 
In the first place the, interruption, at any 
rate, was a grievous injury; then, the tone 
displeased me. And, finally, unless there be 
real affection in his heart, a man cannot, — 
such is the bad state to which the world has 
brought itself,— cannot more effectually show 
his contempt for a brother-mortal, nor more 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


121 


gallingly assume a position of superiority, 
than by addressing him as “friend.” Espe- 
cially does the misapplication of this phrase 
bring out that latent hostility which is sure to 
animate peculiar sects, and those who, with 
however generous a purpose, have sequestered 
themselves from the crowd ; a feeling, it is 
true, which may be hidden in some dog- 
kennel of the heart, grumbling there in the 
darkness, but is never quite extinct, until the 
dissenting party have gained power and scope 
enough to treat the world generously. For my 
part, I should have taken it as far less an insult 
to be styled “fellow,” “clown,” or “bump- 
kin.” To either of these appellations my 
rustic garb (it was a linen blouse, with 
checked shirt and striped pantaloons, a chip- 
hat on my head, and a rough hickory-stick in 
my hand) very fairly entitled me. As the case 
stood, my temper darted at once to the oppo- 
site pole; not friend, but enemy! 

“What do you want with me?” said I, facing 
about. 

“Come a little nearer, friend,” said the 
stranger, beckoning. 

“No,” answered I. “If I can do anything 
for you, without too much trouble to myself, 
say so. But recollect, if you please, that you 
are not speaking to an acquaintance, much 
less a friend!” 

“Upon my word, I believe not!” retorted 
he, looking as me with some curiosity; and, 
lifting his hat, he made me a salute which had 
enough of sarcasm to be offensive, and just 


122 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


enough of doubtful courtesy to render any 
resentment of it absurd. “But I ask your 
pardon! I recognize a little mistake. If I 
may take the liberty to suppose it, you, sir, 
are probably one of the aesthetic — or shall I 
rather say ecstatic? — laborers, who have 
planted themselves hereabouts. This is your 
forest of Arden ; and you are either the ban- 
ished Duke in person, or one of the chief 
nobles in his train. The melancholy Jacques, 
perhaps? Be it so. In that case, you can 
probably do me a favor. ” 

I never, in my life, felt less inclined to con- 
fer a favor on any man. 

“I am busy,” said I. 

So unexpectedly had the stranger made me 
sensible of his presence, that he had almost 
the effect of an apparition; and certainly a 
less appropriate one (taking into view the dim 
woodland solitude about us) than if the salvage 
man of antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a 
leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. He 
was still young, seemingly a little under thirty, 
of a tall and well-developed figure, and as 
handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style 
of his beauty, however, though a masculine 
style, did not at all commend itself to my 
taste. His countenance — I hardly know how 
to describe the peculiarity —had an indecorum 
in it, a kind of rudeness, a hard, coarse, forth- 
putting freedom of expression, which no de- 
gree of external polish could have abated one 
single jot. Not that it was vulgar. But he 
had no fineness of nature; there was in his 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


128 


eyes (although they might have artifice 
enough of another sort) the naked exposure of 
something that ought not to be left promi- 
nent. With these vague allusions to what I 
have seen in other faces, as well as his, I leave 
the quality to be comprehended best — because 
with an intuitive repugnance — by those who 
possess least of it. 

His hair, as well as his beard and mustache, 
was coal-black ; his eyes, too, were black and 
sparkling, and his teeth remarkably brilliant. 
He was rather carelessly but well and fashion- 
ably dressed, in a summer-morning costume. 
There was a gold chain, exquisitely wrought, 
across his vest. I never saw a smoother or 
whiter gloss than that upon his shirt-bosom, 
which had a pin in it, set with a gem that 
glimmered, in the leafy shadow where he 
stood, like a living tip of fire. He carried a 
stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imi- 
tation of that of a serpent. I hated him, 
partly, I do believe, from a comparison of my 
own homely garb with his well-ordered fop- 
pishness. 

“Well, sir,” said I, a little ashamed of my 
first irritation, but still with no waste of 
civility, “be pleased to speak as once, as I 
have my own business in hand.” 

“I regret that my mode of addressing you 
was a little unfortunate,” said the stranger, 
smiling; for he seemed a very acute sort of 
person, and saw, in some degree, how I stood 
affected toward him. “I intended no offense, 
and shall certainly comport myself with due 


124 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


ceremony hereafter. I merely wish to make 
a few inquiries respecting a lady, formerly of 
my acquaintance, who is now resident in your 
Community, and, I believe, largely concerned 
in your social enterprise. You call her, I 
think, Zenobia. ” 

“That is her name in literature,” observed 
I; “a name, too, which possibly she may 
permit her private friends to know and address 
her by, — but not one which they feel at liberty 
to recognize when used of her, personally, by 
a stranger or casual acquaintance.” 

“Indeed!” answered this disagreeable per- 
son; and he turned aside his face for an instant 
with a brief laugh, which struck me as a note- 
worthy expression of his character. “Perhaps 
I might put forward a claim, on your own 
grounds, to call the lady by a name so appro- 
priate to her splendid qualities. But I am 
willing to know her by any cognomen that you 
may suggest. ” 

Heartily wishing that he would be either 
a little more offensive, or a good deal less so, 
or break off our intercourse altogether, I men- 
tioned Zenobia’s real name. 

“True,” said he; “and in general society, I 
have never heard her called otherwise. And, 
after all, our discussion of the point has been 
gratuitous. My object is only to inquire when, 
where and how, this lady may most conven- 
iently be seen. ” 

“At her present residence, of course,” I 
replied. “You have but to go thither and ask 
for her. This very path will lead you within 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


125 


sight of the house ; so I wish you good-morn- 
ing.” 

‘‘One moment, if you please,” said the 
stranger. ‘‘The course you indicate would 
certainly be the proper one, in an ordinary 
morning call. But my business is private, 
personal, and somewhat peculiar. Now, in a 
community like this, I should judge that any 
little occurrence is likely to be discussed 
rather more minutely than would quite suit 
my views. I refer solely to myself, you un- 
derstand, and without intimating that it would 
be other than a matter of entire indifference 
to the lady. In short, I especially desire to 
see her in private. If her habits are such as I 
have known them, she is probably often to be 
met with in the woods, or by the river-side; 
and I think you could do me the favor to point 
out some favorite walk where, about this 
hour, I might be fortunate enough to gain an 
interview. ” 

I reflected that it would be quite a super- 
erogatory piece of Quixotism in me to under- 
take the guardianship of Zenobia, who, for my 
pains, would only make me the butt of endless 
ridicule, should the fact ever come to her 
knowledge. I therefore described a spot which, 
as often as any other, was Zenobia’s resort at 
this period of the day ; nor was it so remote 
from the farm-house as to leave her in much 
peril, whatever might be the stranger’s char- 
acter. 

“A single word more,” said he; and his 
black eyes sparkled at me, whether with fun 


126 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


or malice I knew not, but certainly as if the 
devil were peeping out of them. “Among 
your fraternity, I understand, there is a cer- 
tain holy and benevolent blacksmith ; a man 
of iron, in more senses than one; a rough, 
cross-grained, well-meaning individual, rather 
boorish in his manners, as might be expected, 
and by no means of the highest intellectual 
cultivation. He is a philanthropical lecturer, 
with two or three disciples, and a scheme of 
his own, the preliminary step in which in- 
volves a large purchase of land, and the erec- 
tion of a spacious edifice, at an expense con- 
siderably beyond his means; inasmuch as 
these are to be reckoned in copper or old iron 
much more conveniently than in gold or silver. 
He hammers away upon his one topic as lustily 
as ever he did upon a horse-shoe ! Do you 
know such a person?” 

I shook my head and was turning away. 

“Our friend,” he continued, “is described to 
me as a brawny, shaggy, grim, and ill-favored 
personage, not particularly well calculated, 
one would say, to insinuate himself with the 
softer sex. Yet, so far has this honest fellow 
succeeded with one lady whom we wot of, that 
he anticipates, from her abundant resources, 
the necessary funds for realizing his plan in 
brick and mortar!” 

Here the stranger seemed to be so much 
amused with his sketch of Hollingsworth’s 
character and purposes, that he burst into a fit 
of merriment, of the same nature as the brief, 
metallic laugh, already alluded to, but im- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


127 


mensely prolonged and enlarged. In the ex- 
cess of his delight he opened his mouth wide, 
and disclosed a gold band around the upper- 
part of his teeth, thereby making it apparent 
that every'one of his brilliant grinders and in- 
cisors was a sham. This discovery affected me 
very oddly. I felt as if the whole man were a 
moral and physical humbug; his wonderful 
beauty of face, for aught I knew, might be 
removable like a mask ; and, tall and comely as 
his figure looked, he was perhaps but a 
wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with noth- 
ing genuine about him, save the wicked ex- 
pression of his grin. The fantasy of his spec- 
tral character so wrought upon me, together 
with the contagion of his strange mirth on my 
sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as 
loudly as himself. 

By and by, he paused all at once ; so sud- 
denly, indeed, that my own cachination lasted 
a moment longer. 

“Ah, excuse me!” said he. “Our interview 
seems to proceed more merrily than it began.” 

“It ends here,” answered I. “And I take 
shame to myself, that my folly has lost me the 
right of resenting your ridicule of a friend.” 

“Pray allow me,” said the stranger, ap- 
proaching a step nearer, and laying his gloved 
hand on my sleeve. “One other favor I must 
ask of you. You have a young person, here at 
Blithedale, of whom I have heard, — whom, 
perhaps, I know, — and in whom, at all events, 
I take a peculiar interest. She is one of those 
delicate, nervous young creatures, not uncom- 


128 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


mon in New England, and whom I suppose to 
have become what we find them by the 
gradual refining away of the physical system 
among your women. Some philosophers choose 
to glorify this habit of body by terming it 
spiritual; but, in my opinion, it is rather the 
effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of 
out-door exercise, and neglect of bathing, on 
the part of these damsels and their female pro- 
genitors, all resulting in a kind of hereditary 
dyspepsia. Zenobia, ever with her uncom- 
fortable surplus of vitality, is far the better 
model of womanhood. But — to revert again to 
this young person — she goes among you by the 
name of Priscilla. Could , you possibly afford 
me the means of speaking with her?” 

‘‘You have made so many inquiries of me,” 
I observed, “that I may at least trouble you 
with one. What is your name?” 

He offered me a card with “Professor West- 
ervelt” engraved on it. At the same time, as 
if to vindicate his claim to the professional 
dignity, so often assumed on very questionable 
grounds, he put on a pair of spectacles, which 
so altered the character of his face that I 
hardly knew him again. But I liked the 
present aspect no better than the former one. 

“I must decline any further connection with 
your affairs,” said I, drawing back. “I have 
told you where to find Zenobia. As for Pris- 
cilla, she has closer friends than myself, 
through whom, if they see fit, you can gain 
access to her.” 

“In that case,” returned the professor, cere- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


129 


moniously raising his hat, “good-morning to 
you. ’ ’ 

He took his departure, and was soon out of 
sight among the windings of the wood-path. 
But, after a little reflection, I could not help 
regretting that I had so peremptorily broken 
off the interview, while the stranger seemed 
inclined to continue it. His evident knowledge 
of matters affecting my three friends might 
have led to disclosures, or inferences, that 
would perhaps have been serviceable. I was 
particularly struck with the fact that, ever since 
the appearance of Priscilla, it had been the 
tendency of events to suggest and establish a 
connection between Zenobia and her. She had 
come, in the first instance, as if with the sole 
purpose of claiming Zenobia’s protection. 
Old Moodie’s visit, it appears, was chiefly to 
ascertain whether this object had been accom- 
plished. And here, to-day, was the question- 
able professor, linking one with the other in 
his inquiries, and seeking communication with 
both. 

Meanwhile, my inclination for a ramble hav- 
ing been balked, I lingered in the vicinity of 
the farm, with perhaps a vague idea that some 
new event would grow out of Westervelt’s 
proposed interview with Zenobia. My own 
part in these transactions, was singularly 
subordinate. It resembled that of the Chorus 
in a classic play, which seems to be set aloof 
from the possibility of personal concernment, 
and bestows the whole measure of its hope or 
fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the fortunes 

e Blithedale 


130 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


of others, between whom and itself this sym- 
pathy is the only bond. Destiny, it may be, — 
the most skilful of stage-managers, — seldom 
chooses to arrange its scenes, and carry for- 
ward its drama, without securing the presence 
of at least one calm observer. It is his office 
to give applause when due, and sometimes an 
inevitable tear, to detect the final fitness of 
incident to character, and distill in his long- 
brooding thought the whole morality of the 
performance. 

Not to be out of the way, in case there were 
need of me in my vocation, and, at the same 
time, to avoid thrusting myself where neither 
destiny nor mortals might desire my presence, 
I remained pretty near the verge of the wood- 
lands. My position was off the track of Zeno- 
bia’s customary walk, yet not so remote but 
that a recognized occasion might speedily have 
brought me thither. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


131 


CHAPTER XII. 
coverdale’s hermitage. 

Long since, in this part of our circumjacent 
wood, I had found out for myself a little her- 
mitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high up- 
ward into the air, among the midmost branches 
of a white-pine tree. A wild grape-vine, of 
unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and 
twisted itself up into the tree, and, after 
wreathing the entanglement of its tendrils 
almost around every bough, had caught hold 
of three or four neighboring trees, and married 
the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable 
knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering 
myself from a summer shower, the fancy had 
taken me to clamber up into this seemingly 
impervious mass of foliage. The branches 
yielded me a passage, and closed again beneath, 
as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far 
aloft, around the stem of the central pine, be- 
hold a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or 
King Charles ! A hollow chamber of rare seclu- 
sion had been formed by the decay of some 
of the pine branches, which the vine had lov- 
ingly strangled with its embrace, burying 
them from the light of day in an aerial 
sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me but 
little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and 


132 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


open loop-holes through the verdant walls. 
Had it ever been my fortune to spend a honey- 
moon, I should have thought seriously of invit- 
ing my bride up thither, where our next neigh- 
bors would have been two orioles in another 
part of the clump. 

It was an admirable place to make verses, 
tuning the rhythm to the breezy symphony 
that so often stirred among the vine-leaves; or 
to meditate an essay for the Dial, in which the 
many tongues of Nature whispered mysteries, 
and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff 
of wind to speak out the solution of its riddle. 
Being so pervious to air-currents, it was just the 
nook, too, for the enjoyment of a cigar. This 
hermitage was my one exclusive possession 
while I counted myself a brother of the social- 
ists. It symbolized my individuality, and aided 
me in keeping it inviolate. None ever found 
me out in it, except, once, a squirrel. I 
brought thither no guest, because, after Hol- 
lingsworth failed me, there was no longer the 
man alive with whom I could think of sharing 
all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not 
without liberal and hospitable thoughts. I 
counted the innumerable clusters of my wine, 
and fore-reckoned the abundance of my vin- 
tage. It gladdened me to anticipate the sur- 
prise of the Community, when, like an allegori- 
cal figure of rich October, I should make my 
appearance, with shoulders bent beneath the 
burden of ripe grapes, and some of the crushed 
ones crimsoning my brow as with a blood- 
stain. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


133 


Ascending into this natural turret, I peeped 
in turn out of several of its small windows. 
The pine-tree, being ancient, rose high above 
the rest of the wood, which was of compara- 
tively recent growth. Even where I sat, about 
midway between the root and the topmost 
bough, my position was lofty enough to serve 
as an observatory, not for starry investiga- 
tions, but for those sublunary matters in which 
lay a lore as infinite as that of the planets. 
Through one loop-hole I saw the river lapsing 
calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its 
brink, a few of the brethren were digging peat 
for our winter’s fuel. On the interior cartroad 
of our farm, I discerned Hollingsworth, with 
a yoke of oxen hitched to a drag of stones, that 
were to be piled into a fence, on which we 
employed ourselves at the odd intervals of 
other labor. The harsh tones of his voice, shout- 
ing to the sluggish steers, made me sensible, 
even at such a distance, that he was ill at ease, 
and that the balked philanthropist had the 
battle-spirit in his heart. 

“Haw, Buck!” quoth he. “Come along 
there, ye lazy ones! What are ye about, now? 
Gee!” 

“Mankind, in Hollingsworth’s opinion,” 
thought I, “is but another yoke of oxen, as 
stubborn, stupid, and sluggish, as our old 
Brown and Bright. He vituperates us aloud, 
and curses us in his heart, and will begin to 
prick us with the goad-stick, by and by. But 
are we his oxen? And what right has he to be 
the driver? And why, when there is enough 


134 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


else to do, should we waste our strength in 
dragging home the ponderous load of his 
philanthropic absurdities? At my height above 
the earth, the whole matter looks ridiculous!” 

Turning toward the farm-house, I saw Pris- 
cilla (for, though a great way off, the eye of 
faith assured me that it was she) sitting at 
Zenobia’s window, and making little purses, 
I suppose; or, perhaps, mending the Com- 
munity’s old linen. A bird flew past my tree; 
and, as it clove its way onward into the sunny 
atmosphere, I flung it a message for Priscilla. 

“Tell her,” said I, “that her fragile thread 
of life has inextricably knotted itself with 
other and tougher threads, and most likely it 
will be broken. Tell her that Zenobia will 
not be long her friend. Say that Hollings- 
worth’s heart is on fire with his own purpose, 
but icy for all human affection ; and that, if 
she has given him her love, it is like casting a 
flower into a sepulchre. And say that if any 
mortal really cares for her, it is myself; and 
not even I, for her realities, — poor little seam- 
stress, as Zenobia rightly called her! — but for 
the fancy-work with which I have idly decked 
her out!” 

The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by 
the hot sun, stole up to my nostrils, as if I 
had been an idol in its niche. Many trees 
mingled their fragrance into a thousand-fold 
odor. Possibly there was a sensual influence 
in the broad light of noon that lay beneath 
me. It may have been the cause, in part, that 
I suddenly found myself possessed by a mood 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


135 


of disbelief in moral beauty or heroism, and a 
conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit 
the world. Our especial scheme of reform, 
which, from my observatory, I could take in 
with the bodily eye, looked so ridiculous that it 
was impossible not to laugh aloud. 

“But the joke is a little too heavy,” thought 
I. “If I were wise, I should get out of the 
scrape with all diligence, and then laugh at my 
companions for remaining in it.” 

While thus musing, I heard, with perfect 
distinctness, somewhere in the wood beneath, 
the peculiar laugh which I have described as 
one of the disagreeable characteristics of Pro- 
fessor Westervelt. It brought my thoughts 
back to our recent interview. I recognized as 
chiefly due to this man’s influence the sceptical 
and sneering view which, just now, had filled 
my mental vision, in regard to all life’s better 
purposes. And it was through his eyes, more 
than my own, that I was looking at Hollings- 
worth, with his glorious, if impracticable 
dream, and at the noble earthliness of Zeno- 
bia’s character, and even at Priscilla, whose 
impalpable grace lay so singularly between 
disease and beauty. The essential charm of 
each had vanished. There are some spheres 
the contact with which inevitably degrades the 
high, debases the pure, deforms the beauti- 
ful. It must be a mind of uncommon 
strength, and little impressibility, that can 
permit itself the habit of such intercourse, and 
not be permanently deteriorated; and yet the 
Professor’s tone represented that of worldly 


136 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


society at large, where a cold scepticism 
smothers what it can of our spiritual aspira- 
tions, and makes the rest ridiculous. I de- 
tested this kind of man ; and all the more be- 
cause a part of my own nature showed itself 
responsive to him. 

Voices were now approaching through the 
region of the wood which lay in the vicinity of 
my tree. Soon I caught glimpses of two fig- 
ures — a woman and a man — Zenobia and the 
stranger — earnestly talking together as they 
advanced. 

Zenobia had a rich, though varying color. 
It was, most of the while, a flame, and anon a 
sudden paleness. Her eyes glowed, so that 
their light sometimes flashed upward to me, 
as when the sun throws a dazzle from some 
bright object on the ground. Her gestures 
were free, and strikingly impressive. The 
whole woman was alive with a passionate in- 
tensity, which I now perceived to be the phase 
in which her beauty culminated. Any pas- 
sion would have become her well ; and passion- 
ate love, perhaps, the best of all. This was not 
love, but anger, largely intermixed with scorn. 
Yet the idea strangely forced itself upon me, 
that there was a sort of familiarity between 
these two companions, necessarily the result of 
an intimate love, — on Zenobia’s part, at least, 
— in days gone by, but which had prolonged 
itself into as intimate a hatred, for all futurity. 
As they passed among the trees, reckless as 
her movement was, she took good heed that 
even the hem of her garment should not brush 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


137 


against the stranger’s person. I wondered 
whether there had always been a chasm, 
guarded so religiously, betwixt these two. 

As for Westervelt, he was not a whit more 
warmed by Zenobia’s passion than a salaman- 
der by the heat of its native furnace. He 
would have been absolutely statuesque, save 
for a look of slight perplexity, tinctured 
strongly with derision. It was a crisis in which 
his intellectual perceptions could not alto- 
gether help him out. He failed to comprehend, 
and cared but little for comprehending, why 
Zenobia should put herself into such a fume ; 
but satisfied his mind that it was all folly, and 
only another shape of a woman’s manifold ab- 
surdity, which men can never understand. 
How many a woman’s evil fate has yoked her 
with a man like this! Nature thrusts some of 
us into the world miserably incomplete on the 
emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities 
except what pertain to us as animals. No pas- 
sion, save of the senses; no holy tenderness, nor 
the delicacy that results from this. Externally 
they bear a close resemblance to other men, 
and have perhaps all save the finest grace; 
but when a woman wrecks herself on such a 
being, she ultimately finds that the real 
womanhood within her has no corresponding 
part in him. Her deepest voice lacks a re- 
sponse ; the deeper her cry, the more dead his 
silence. The fault maybe none of his; he 
cannot give her what never lived within his 
soul. But the wretchedness on her side, and 
the moral deterioration attendant on a false 

10 Blithedale 


138 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and shallow life, without strength enough to 
keep itself sweet, are among the most pitiable 
wrongs that mortals suffer. 

Now, as I looked down from my upper 
region at this man and woman, — outwardly so 
fair a sight, and wandering like two lovers in 
the wood, — I imagined that Zenobia, at an 
earlier period of youth, might have fallen into 
the misfortune above indicated. And when 
her passionate womanhood, as was inevitable, 
had discovered its mistake, there had ensued 
the character of eccentricity and defiance 
which distinguished the more public portion of 
her life. 

Seeing how aptly matter had chanced thus 
far, I began to think it the design of fate to let 
me into all Zenobia’s secrets, and that there- 
fore the couple would sit down beneath my 
tree, and carry on a conversation which would 
leave me nothing to inquire. No doubt, 
however, had it so happened, I should have 
deemed myself honorably bound to warn them 
of a listener’s presence, by flinging down a 
handful of unripe grapes, or by sending an un- 
earthly groan out of my hiding-place, as if this 
were one of the trees of Dante’s ghostly forest. 
But real life never arranges itself exactly like 
a romance. In the first place, they did not sit 
down at all. Secondly, even while they passed 
beneath the tree, Zenobia’s utterance was so 
hasty and broken, and Westervelt’s so cool and 
low, that I hardly could make out an intellig- 
ible sentence, on either side. What I seem to 
remember, I yet suspect, may have been 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


139 


patched together by my fancy, in brooding 
over the matter, afterward. 

“Why not fling the girl off,” said Wester- 
velt, “and let her go?” 

“She clung to me from the first,” replied 
Zenobia. “I neither know nor care what it is 
in me that so attaches her. But she loves me, 
and I will not fail her.” 

“She will plague you, then,” said he, “in 
more ways than one.” 

“The poor child!” exclaimed Zenobia. 
“She can do me neither good nor harm. How 
should she?” 

I know not what reply Westervelt whis- 
pered; nor did Zenobia’s subsequent exclama- 
tion give me any clue, except that it evidently 
inspired her with horror and disgust. 

“With what kind of a being am I linked?” 
cried she. “If my Creator cares aught for my 
soul, let him release me from this miserable 
bond!” 

“I did not think it weighed so heavily,” 
said her companion. 

“Nevertheless,” answered Zenobia, “it will 
strangle me at last!” 

And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of 
moan ; a sound which, struggling out of the 
heart of a person of her pride and strength, 
affected me more than if she had made the 
wood dolorously vocal with a thousand shrieks 
and wails. 

Other mysterious words, besides what are 
above written, they spoke together; but I 
understood no more and even question whether 


140 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


I fairly understood so much as this. By long 
brooding over our recollections, we subtilize 
them into something akin to imaginary stuff, 
and hardly capable of being distinguished from 
it. In a few moments they were completely 
beyond ear-shot. A breeze stirred after them, 
and awoke the leafy tongues of the surround- 
ing trees, which forthwith began to babble, as 
if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind 
of Zenobia’s secret. But, as the breeze grew 
stronger, its voice among the branches was as 
if it had said, “Hush! Hush!” and I resolved 
that to no mortal would I disclose what I had 
heard. And though there might be room for 
casuistry, such, I conceive, is the most equita- 
ble rule in all similar conjunctures. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


141 


CHAPTER XIII. 
zenobia’s legend. 

The illustrious Society of Blithedale, though 
it toiled in downright earnest for the good of 
mankind, yet not unfrequently illuminated its 
laborious life with an afternoon or evening of 
pastime. Picnics under the trees were consid- 
erably in vogue ; and, within doors, fragmen- 
tary bits of theatrical performance, such as 
single acts of tragedy or comedy, or dramatic 
proverbs and charades. Zenobia, besides, was 
fond of giving us readings from Shakespeare, 
and often with a depth of tragic power, or 
breath of comic effect, that made one feel it an 
intolerable wrong to the world that she did 
not at once go upon the stage. Tableaux 
vivants were another of our occasional modes 
of amusement, in which scarlet shawls, old 
silken robes, ruffs, velvets, furs, and all kinds 
of miscellaneous trumpery, converted our 
familiar companions into the people of a pic- 
torial world. We had been thus engaged on 
the evening after the incident narrated in the 
last chapter. Several splendid works of art — 
either arranged after engravings from the old 
masters, or original illustrations of scenes in 
history or romance — had been presented, and 
we were earnestly entreating Zenobia for more. 


142 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


She stood with a meditative air, holding a 
large piece of gauze, or some such ethereal 
stuff, as if considering what picture should 
next occupy the frame ; while at her feet lay a 
heap of many colored garments, which her 
quick fancy and magic skill could so easily 
convert into gorgeous draperies for heroes and 
princesses. 

“I am getting weary of this,” said she, after 
a moment’s thought. ‘‘Our own features and 
our own figures and airs, show a little too 
intrusively through all the characters we 
assume. We have so much familiarity with 
one another’s realities, that we cannot remove 
ourselves at pleasure, into an imaginary sphere. 
Let us have no more pictures to-night; but, to 
make you what poor amends I can, how would 
you like to have me trump up a wild, spectral 
legend, on the spur of the moment?” 

Zenobia had the gift of telling a fanciful lit- 
tle story, offhand, in a way that made it greatly 
more effective than it was usually found to 
be when she afterward elaborated the same 
production with her pen. Her proposal, there- 
fore, was greeted with acclamation. 

“O, a story, a story, by all means!” cried 
the young girls. ‘‘No matter how marvelous; 
we will believe it, every word. And let it be 
a ghost-story, if you please.” 

‘‘No, not exactly a ghost-story,” answered 
Zenobia; ‘‘but something so nearly like it that 
you shall hardly tell the difference. And 
Priscilla, stand you before me, where I may 
look at you, and get my inspiration out of your 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


143 


eyes. They are very deep and dreamy 
to-night. ” 

I know not whether the following version of 
her story will retain any portion of its prestine 
character; but as Zenobia told it wildly and 
rapidly, hesitating at no extravagance, and 
dashing at absurdities which I am too timorous 
to repeat, — giving it the varied emphasis of 
her inimitable voice, and the pictorial illustra- 
tion of her mobile face, while through it all we 
caught the freshest aroma of the thoughts, as 
they came bubbling out of her mind, — thus 
narrated, and thus heard the legend seemed 
quite a remarkable affair. I scarcely knew, at 
the time, whether she intended us to laugh or 
be more seriously impressed. From beginning 
to end, it was undeniable nonsense, but not 
necessarily the worse for that. 

THE SILVERY VEIL. 

You have heard, my dear friends, of the 
Veiled Lady, who grew suddenly so very fam- 
ous, a few months ago. And have you never 
thought how remarkable it was that this mar- 
velous creature should vanish, all at once, 
while her renown was on the increase, before 
the public had grown weary of her and when 
the enigma of her character, instead of being 
solved, presented itself more mystically at 
every exhibition? Her last appearance, as you 
know, was before a crowded audience. The 
next evening, — although the bills had an- 
nounced her, at the corner of every street, in 


144 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


red letters of gigantic size, — there was no 
Veiled Lady to be seen! Now, listen to my 
simple little tale, and you shall hear the very 
latest incident in the known life — (if life it 
may be called, which seemed to have no more 
reality than the candle-light image of one’s self 
which peeps at us outside of a dark window 
pane) — the life of this shadowy phenomenon. 

A party of young gentlemen, you are to 
understand, were enjoying themselves, one 
afternoon, as young gentlemen are sometimes 
fond of doing, — over a bottle or two of cham- 
pagne ; and, among other ladies, less mysteri- 
ous, the subject of the Veiled Lady, as was 
very natural, happened to come up before 
them for discussion. She rose, as it were, with 
the sparkling effervescence of their wine, and 
appeared in a more airy and fantastic light on 
account of the medium through which they saw 
her. They repeated to one another between 
jest and earnest, all the wild stories that were 
in vogue; nor, I presume, did they hesitate to 
add any small circumstance that the inventive 
whim of the moment might suggest, to height- 
en the marvelousness of their theme. 

“But what an audacious report was that,” 
observed one, “which pretended to assert the 
identity of this strange creature with a young 
lady,” — and here he mentioned her name, — 
“the daughter of one of our most distinguished 
families!’’ 

“Ah, there is more in that story than can 
well be accounted for,’’ remarked another. 
“I have it, on good authority that the young 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


145 


lady in question is invariably out of sight, and 
not to be traced, even by her own family, at 
the hours when the Veiled Lady is before the 
public; nor can any satisfactory explanation 
be given of her disappearance. And just look 
at the thing : Her brother is a young fellow 
spirit. He cannot but be aware of these ru- 
mors in reference to his sister. Why, then, 
does he not come forward to defend her char- 
acter, unless he is conscious that an investiga- 
tion would only make the matter worse?” 

It is essential to the purposes of my legend 
to distinguish one of these young gentlemen 
from his companions; so, for the sake of a soft 
and pretty name (such as we of the literary 
sisterhood invariably bestow upon our heroes), 
I deem it fit to call him Theodore. 

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Theodore; “her 
brother is no such fool! Nobody, unless his 
brain be as full of bubbles as this wine, can 
seriously think of crediting that ridiculous 
rumor. Why, if my senses did not play me 
false (which never was the case yet), I affirm 
that I saw that very lady, last evening, at the 
exhibition while this veiled phenomenon! was 
playing off her juggling tricks ! What can you 
say to that?” 

“O, it was a spectral illusion that you saw,” 
replied his friends with a general laugh. 
“The Veiled Lady is quite up to such a thing. ” 

However, as the above-mentioned fable 
could not hold its ground against Theodore’s 
downright refutation, they went on to speak of 
other stories which the wild babble of the town 

10 Blithedale 


146 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


had set afloat. Some upheld that the veil 
covered the most beautiful countenance in the 
world; others, — and certainly with more 
reason, considering the sex of the Veiled Lady, 
— that the face was the most hideous and hor- 
rible, and that this was her sole motive for 
hiding it. It was the face of a corpse; it was 
the head of a skeleton; it was a monstrous 
visage, with snaky locks, like Medusa’s, and 
one great red eye in the center of the forehead. 
Again it was affirmed that there was no single 
and unchangeable set of features beneath the 
veil; but that whosoever should be bold 
enough to lift it would behold the features of 
that person, in all the world, who was destined 
to be his fate; perhaps he would be greeted 
by the tender smile of the woman whom he 
loved, or, quite as probably, the deadly scowl 
of his bitterest enemy would throw a blight 
over his 'life. They quoted, moreover, this 
startling explanation of the whole affair; that 
the magician who exhibited the Veiled Lady — 
and who, by the by, was the handsomest man 
in the whole world — had bartered his own soul 
for seven years’ possession of a familiar fiend, 
and that the last year of the contract was 
wearing toward its close. 

If it were worth our while, I could keep you 
till an hour beyond midnight listening to a 
thousand such absurdities as these. But fin- 
ally our friend Theodore, who prided himself 
upon his common sense, found the matter get- 
ting quite beyond his patience. 

“I offer any wager you like,” cried he, set- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


147 


ting nown his glass so forcibly as to break the 
stem of it, “that this very evening I find out 
the mystery of the Veiled Lady!” 

Young men, I am told, boggle at nothing, 
over their wine; so, after a little more talk, a 
wager of considerable amount was actually laid, 
the money staked, and Theodore left to choose 
his own method of settling the dispute. 

How he managed it I know not, nor is it of 
any great importance to this veracious legend. 
The most natural way, to be sure, was by 
bribing the door-keeper, — or possibly he pre- 
ferred clambering in at the window. But, at 
any rate, that very evening, while the exhibi- 
tion was going forward in the hall, Theodore 
contrived to gain admittance into the private 
withdrawing-room whither the Veiled Lady 
was accustomed to retire at the close of her 
performances. There he waited, listening, I 
suppose, to the stifled hum of the great audi- 
ence ; and no doubt he could distinguish the 
deep tones of the magician, causing the won- 
ders that he wrought to appear more dark and 
intricate, by his mystic pretence of an explan- 
ation. Perhaps, too, in the intervals of the 
wild, breezy music which accompanied the 
exhibition, he might hear the low voice of the 
Veiled Lady, conveying her sibylline responses. 
Firm as Theodore’s nerves might be, and much 
as he prided himself on his sturdy perceptions 
of realities, I should not be surprised if his 
heart throbbed at a little more than its ordinary 
rate. 

Theodore concealed himself behind a screen. 


148 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


In due time, the performance was brought to 
a close, and, whether the door was softly 
opened, or whether her bodiless presence came 
through the wall, is more than I can say, but 
all at once, without the young man’s knowing 
how it happened, a veiled figure stood in the 
center of the room. It was one thing to be in 
presence of this mystery in the hall of exhibi- 
tion, where the warm, dense life of hundreds 
of other mortals kept up the beholder’s cour- 
age, and distributed her influence among so 
many ; it was another thing to be quite alone 
with her, and that, too, with a hostile, or, at 
least, an unauthorized and unjustifiable pur- 
pose. I rather imagine that Theodore now 
began to be sensible of something more serious 
in his enterprise than he had been quite aware 
of, while he sat with his boon-companions over 
their sparkling wine. 

Very strange, it must be confessed, was the 
movement with which the figure floated to and 
fro over the carpet, with the silvery veil cover- 
ing her from head to foot ; so impalpable, so 
ethereal, so without substance, as the texture 
seemed, yet hiding her every outline in an 
impenetrability like that of midnight. Surely, 
she did not walk! She floated, and flitted, 
and hovered about the room ; — no sound of a 
footstep, no perceptible motion of a limb; — it 
was as if a wandering breeze wafted her before 
it, at its own wild and gentle pleasure. But, 
by and by, a purpose began to be discernible, 
throughout the seeming vagueness of her 
unrest. She was in quest of something. Could 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


149 


it be that a subtile presentiment had informed 
her of the young man’s presence? And if so, 
did the Veiled Lady seek or did she shun him? 
The doubt in Theodore’s mind was speedily 
resolved; for, after a moment or two of these 
erratic flutterings, she advanced more decid- 
edly, and stood motionless before the screen. 

“Thou art here!” said a soft, low voice. 
“Come forth, Theodore!” 

Thus summoned by his name, Theodore, as 
a man of courage, had no choice. He emerged 
from his concealment, and presented himself 
before the Veiled Lady, with the wine-flush, it 
may be, quite gone out of his cheeks. 

“What wouldst thou with me?” she inquired, 
with the same gentle composure that was in 
her former utterance. 

“Mysterious creature,” replied Theodore, 
“I would know who and what you are!” 

“My lips are forbidden to betray the secret,” 
said the Veiled Lady. 

“At whatever risk, I must discover it,” 
rejoined Theodore. 

“Then,” said the Mystery, “there is no way, 
save to lift my veil.” 

And Theodore, partly recovering his auda- 
city, stepped forward on the instant, to do as 
the Veiled Lady had suggested. But she float- 
ed backward to the opposite side of the room, 
as if the young man’s breath had possessed 
power enough to waft her away. 

“Pause, one little instant,” said the soft, low 
voice, “and learn the conditions of what thou 
art so bold to undertake ! Thou canst go hence, 


150 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and think of me no more ; or, at thy option, 
thou canst lift this mysterious veil, beneath 
which I am a sad and lonely prisoner, in a 
bondage which is worse to me than death. 
But, before raising it, I entreat thee, in all 
maiden modesty, to bend forward and impress 
a kiss where my breath stirs the veil; and my 
virgin lips shall come forward to meet thy 
lips; and from that instant, Theodore, thou 
shalt be mine, and I thine, with never more a 
veil between us. And all the felicity of earth 
and of the future world shall be thine and mine 
together. So much may a maiden say behind 
the veil. If thou shrinkest, from this, there is 
yet another way. ” 

“And what is that?” asked Theodore. 

“Dost thou hesitate,” said the Veiled Lady, 
“to pledge thyself to me, by meeting these lips 
of mine, while the veil yet hides my face? Has 
not thy heart recognized me? Dost thou come 
hither, not in holy faith, nor with a pure and 
generous purpose, but in scornful scepticism 
and idle curiosity? Still, thou mayest lift the 
veil! But, from that instant, Theodore, I am 
doomed to be thy evil fate; nor wilt thou ever 
taste another breath of happiness!” 

There was a shade of inexpressible sadness 
in the utterance of these last words. But 
Theodore, whose natural tendency was toward 
scepticism, felt himself almost injured and 
insulted by the Veiled Lady’s proposal that he 
should pledge himself, for life and eternity, to 
so questionable a creature as herself ; or even 
that she should suggest an inconsequential kiss, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


151 


taking into view the probability that her face 
was none of the most bewitching. A delightful 
idea, truly, that he should .salute the lips of a 
dead girl, or the jaws of a skeleton, or the 
grinning cavity of a monster’s mouth! Even 
if she should prove a comely maiden enough 
in other respects, the odds were ten to one that 
her teeth were defective ; a terrible drawback 
on the delectableness of a kiss. 

“Excuse me, fair lady,” said Theodore, — and 
I think he nearly burst into a laugh, — “if I 
prefer to lift the veil first; and for this affair 
of the kiss, we may decide upon it afterward.” 

‘ ‘ Thou hast made thy choice, ’ ’ said the sweet, 
sad voice behind the veil; and there seemed a 
tender but unresentful sense of wrong done to 
womanhood by the young man’s contemptuous 
interpretation of her offer. “I must not coun- 
sel thee to pause, although thy fate is still in 
thine own hand!” 

Grasping at the veil, he flung it upward, and 
caught a glimpse of a pale, lovely face beneath; 
just one momentary glimpse, and then the 
apparition vanished, and the silvery veil flut- 
tered slowly down and lay upon the floor. 
Theodore was alone. Our legend leaves him 
there. His retribution was, to pine forever 
and ever for another sight of that dim, mourn- 
ful face, — which might have been his life-long 
household fireside joy, — to desire, and waste 
life in a feverish quest, and never meet it 
more. 

But what, in good sooth, had become of the 
Veiled Lady? Had all her existence been 


152 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


comprehended within that mysterious veil, and 
was she now annihilated? Or was she a spirit, 
with a heavenly essence, but which might 
have been tamed down to human bliss, had 
Theodore been brave and true enough to claim 
her? Harken, my sweet friends, — and harken, 
dear Priscilla, — and you shall learn the little 
more that Zenobia can tell you. 

Just at the moment, so far as can be ascer- 
tained, when the Veiled Lady vanished, a 
maiden, pale and shadowy, rose up amid a 
knot of visionary people, who were seeking for 
the better life. She was so gentle and so sad, 
— a nameless melancholy gave her such hold 
upon their sympathies — that they never thought 
of questioning whence she came. She might 
have heretofore existed, or her thin substance 
might have been moulded out of air at the very 
instant when they first beheld her. It was all 
one to them; they took her to their hearts. 
Among them was a lady, to whom, more than 
to all the rest, this pale, mysterious girl 
attached herself. 

But one morning the lady was wandering in 
the woods, and there met her a figure in an 
oriental robe, with a dark beard, and holding 
in his hand a silvery veil. He motioned her to 
stay. Being a woman of some nerve, she did 
not shriek, nor run away, nor faint, as many 
ladies would have been apt to do, but stood 
quietly, and bade him speak. The truth was, 
she had seen his face before, but had never 
feared it, although she knew him to be a ter- 
rible magician. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


153 


“Lady,” said he, with a warning gesture, 
“you are in peril!” 

“Peril!” she exclaimed. “And of what 
nature?” 

“There is a certain maiden,” replied the 
magician, “who has come out of the realm of 
mystery, and made herself your most intimate 
companion. Now, the fates have so ordained 
it, that, whether by her own will or no, this 
stranger is your deadliest enemy. In love, in 
worldly fortune, in all your pursuit of happi- 
ness, she is doomed to fling a blight over your 
prospects. There is but one possibility of 
thwarting her disastrous influence.” 

“Then tell me that one method,” said the 
lady. 

“Take this veil,” he answered, holding forth 
the silvery texture. “It is a spell; it is a 
powerful enchantment, which I wrought for 
her sake, and beneath which she was once my 
prisoner. Throw it, at unawares, over the 
head of this secret foe, stamp your foot, and 
cry, ‘Arise Magician, here is the Veiled Lady!' 
and immediately I will rise up through the 
earth, and seize her; and from that moment 
you are safe.” 

So the lady took the silvery veil, which was 
like woven air, or like some substance airier 
than nothing, and that would float upward and 
be lost among the clouds, were she once to let 
it go. Returning homeward she found the 
shadowy girl, amid the knot of visionary trans- 
cendentalists, who were still seeking for the 
better life. She was joyous now, and had a 


154 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


rosebloom in her cheeks, and was one of the 
prettiest creatures, and seemed one of the hap- 
piest, that the world could show. But the lady 
stole noiselessly behind her, and threw the veil 
over her head. As the slight, ethereal texture 
sank inevitably down over her figure, the poor 
girl strove to raise it, and met her dear friend’s 
eyes with one glance of mortal terror, and 
deep, deep reproach. It could not change her 
purpose. 

“Arise, Magician!” she exclaimed, stamping 
her foot upon the earth. “Here is the Veiled 
Lady!” 

At the word, up rose the bearded man in the 
oriental robes, — the beautiful, the dark magi- 
cian, who had bartered away his soul! He 
threw his arms around the Veiled Lady, and 
she was his bond-slave forevermore! 


Zenobia, all this while, had been holding the 
piece of gauze, and so managed it as greatly to 
increase the dramatic effect of the legend at 
those points where the magic veil was to be 
described. Arriving at the catastrophe, and 
uttering the fatal words, she flung the gauze 
over Priscilla’s head; and for an instant her 
auditors held their breath, half expecting, I 
verily believe, that the magician would start 
up through the floor, and carry off our poor 
little friend, before our eyes. 

As for Priscilla, she stood droopingly in the 
midst of us, making no attempt to remove the 
veil. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


155 


“How do you find yourself, my love?” said 
Zenobia, lifting a corner of the gauze, and 
peeping beneath it, with a mischievous smile. 
“Ah, the dear little soul! Why, she is really 
going to faint! Mr. Coverdale, Mr. Coverdale, 
pray bring a glass of water!” 

Her nerves being none of the strongest, 
Prifecilla hardly recovered her equanimity dur- 
ing the rest of the evening. This, to be sure, 
was a great pity; but, nevertheless, we thought 
it a very bright idea of Zenobia's to bring her 
legend to so effective a conclusion. 


156 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


CHAPTER XIV. 
eliot’s pulpit. 

Our Sundays, at Blithedale, were not ordi- 
narily kept with such rigid observance as might 
have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims, 
whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flat- 
tered ourselves, we had taken up, and were 
carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which 
they never dreamed of attaining. 

On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested 
from our labors. Our oxen, relieved from 
their week-day yoke, roamed at large through 
the pasture ; each yoke-fellow, however, keep- 
ing close beside his mate, and continuing to 
acknowledge, from the force of habit and slug- 
gish sympathy, the union which the taskmaster 
had imposed for his own hard ends. As for us 
human yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, 
whose hoes had clinked together throughout 
the week, we wandered off, in various direc- 
tions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, 
I believe, went devoutly to the village church. 
Others, it may be, ascended a city or a country 
pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much 
dignity that you would scarcely have suspected 
the yeoman’s frock to have been flung off only 
since milking-time. Others took long rambles 
among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


157 


to look at black old farm-houses, with their 
sloping roofs; and at the modern cottage, so 
like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or 
sorrow could have no scope within ; and at the 
more pretending villa, with its range of wood- 
en columns, supporting the needless insolence 
of a great portico. Some betook themselves 
into the wide, dusky barn, and lay there for 
hours together on the odorous hay; while the 
sun-streaks and the shadows strove together, — 
these to make the barn solemn, those to make it 
cheerful, — and both were conquerors; and the 
swallows twittered a cheery anthem, flashing 
into sight, or vanishing, as they darted to and 
from among the golden rules of sunshine. And 
others went a little way into the woods, and 
threw themselves on mother earth, pillowing 
their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay 
of an old log; and, dropping asleep, the hum- 
ble-bees and mosquitoes sung and buzzed about 
their ears, causing the slumberers to twitch 
and start, without awakening. 

With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and 
myself, it grew to be a custom to spend the 
Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was 
known to us under the name of Eliot’s pulpit, 
from a tradition that the venerable Apostle 
Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone 
by, to an Indian auditory. The old dine forest, 
through which the apostle’s voice was wont to 
sound, had fallen, an immemorial time ago. 
But the soil, being of the rudest and most 
broken surface, had apparently never been 
brought under tillage; other growths, maple, 


158 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and beech, and birch, had succeeded to the 
primeval trees; so that it was still as wild a 
tract of woodland as the great-great-great- 
great-grandson of one of Eliot’s Indians (had 
any such posterity been in existence) could 
have desired, for the site and shelter of his 
wigwam. These after-growths, indeed, lose 
the stately solemnity of the original forest. It 
left in due neglect, however, they run into an 
entanglement of softer wildness, among the 
rustling leaves of which the sun can scatter 
cheerfulness as it never could among the dark- 
browed pines. 

The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty 
feet, a shattered granite boulder, or heap of 
boulders, with an irregular outline and many 
fissures, out of which sprang shrubs, bushes, 
and ever, trees; as if the scanty soil within 
those crevice? were sweeter to their roots than 
any other earth. At the base of the pulpit, the 
broken boulders inclined toward each other, so 
as to form a shallow cave, within which our 
little party had sometimes found protection 
from a summer shower. On the threshold, or 
just across it, grew a tuft of pale columbines, 
in their season, and violets, sad and shadowy 
recluses, such as Priscilla was when we first 
knew her; children of the sun, who had never 
seen their father, but dwelt among damp 
mosses, though not akin to them. At the sum- 
mit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy 
of a birch-tree, which served as a sounding- 
board for the pulpit. Beneath this shade (with 
my eyes of sense half shut, and those of the 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


159 


imagination widely opened) I used to see the 
holy Apostle of the Indians, with the sunlight 
flickering down upon him through the leaves, 
and glorifying his figure as with the half-per- 
ceptible glow of a transfiguration. 

I the more minutely describe the rock, and 
this little Sabbath solitude, because Hollings- 
worth, at our solicitation, often ascended Eliot’s 
pulpit, and not exactly preached, but talked to 
us, his few disciples, in a strain that rose and 
fell as naturally as the wind’s breath among 
the leaves of the birch-tree. No other speech 
of man has ever moved me like some of those 
discourses. It seemed most pitiful — a positive 
calamity to the world — that a treasury of golden 
thoughts should thus be scattered, by the lib- 
eral handful, down among us three, when a 
thousand hearers might have been the richer 
for them ; and Efollingsworth the richer, like- 
wise, by the sympathy of multitudes. After 
speaking much or little, as might happen, he 
would descend from his gray pulpit, and gener- 
ally fling himself at full length on the ground, 
face downward. Meanwhile, we talked around 
him, on such topics as were suggested by the 
discourse. 

Since her interview with Westervelt, Zeno- 
bia’s continual inequalities of temper had been 
rather difficult for her friends to bear. On the 
first Sunday after that incident, when Hol- 
lingsworth had clambered down from Eliot’s 
pulpit, she declaimed with great earnestness 
and passion, nothing short of anger, on the 
injustice which the world did to women, and 


160 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


equally to itself, by not allowing them, in 
freedom and honor, and with the fullest wel- 
come, their natural utterance in public. 

“It shall not always be so!” cried she. “If 
I live another year, I will lift up my own voice 
in behalf of woman’s wider liberty!” 

She, perhaps, saw me smile. 

“What matter of ridicule do you find in this, 
Miles Coverdale?” exclaimed Zenobia, with a 
flash of anger in her eyes. “That smile, per- 
mit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low 
tone of feeling and shallow thought. It is my 
belief — yes, and my prophecy, should I die 
before it happens — that, -when my sex shall 
achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent 
women where there is now one eloquent man. 
Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once 
spoken out her whole heart and her whole 
mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the 
vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two 
gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a 
few weak words, and leave a thousand better 
ones unsaid. You let us write a little, it is 
true, on a limited range of subjects. But the 
pen is not for woman. Her power is too natu- 
ral and immediate. It is with the living voice 
alone that she can compel the world to recog- 
nize the light of her intellect and the depth of 
her heart!” 

Now, — though I could not well say so to 
Zenobia, — I had not smiled from any unworthy 
estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims 
which she is beginning to put forth. What 
amused and puzzled me was the fact, that 



Hollingsworth often ascended Eliot’s pulpit.” — Page 159. 

TUe Blitliedale Romance. 

































THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


161 


women, however intellectually superior, so 
seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or 
wrongs of their sex, unless their own indivi 
dual affections chance to lie in idleness, or to 
be ill at ease. They are not natural refor- 
mers, but become such by the pressure of ex- 
ceptional misfortune. I could measure Zeno- 
bia’s inward trouble by the animosity with 
which she now took up the general quarrel of 
woman against man. 

“I will give you leave, Zenobia,” replied I, 
“to fling your utmost scorn upon me, if you 
ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to 
the widest liberty which woman has yet 
dreamed of. I would give her all she asks, 
and add a great deal more, which she will not 
be the party to demand, but which men, if 
they were generous and wise, would grant of 
their own free motion. For instance, I should 
love dearly, — for the next thousand years, at 
least, — to have all government devolve into 
the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by 
my own sex; it excites my jealousy, and 
wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of bod- 
ily force which abases us, in our compelled 
submission. But how sweet the free, generous 
courtesy, with which I would kneel before a 
woman-ruler!” 

“Yes, if she were young and beautiful,” 
said Zenobia, laughing. 4 ‘ But how if she were 
sixty, and a fright?” 

“Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low, ” 
said I. “But let me go on. I have never 
found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so 

11 Blithedale 


162 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


near my heart and conscience as to do me any 
spiritual good. I blush at the very thought ! 
O, in the better order of things, Heaven grant 
that the ministry of souls may be left in charge 
of women! The gates of the Blessed City will 
be thronged with the multitude that enter in, 
when that day comes! The task belongs to 
woman. God meant it for her. He has en- 
dowed her with the religious sentiment in its 
utmost depth and purity, refined from that 
gross, intellectual alloy with which every mas- 
culine theologist — save only One, who merely 
veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape, 
but was, in truth, divine— has been prone to 
mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics 
their faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, 
who stands between them and the Deity, 
intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, 
but permitting his love to stream upon the 
worshiper more intelligibly to human com- 
prehension through the medium of a woman’s 
tenderness. Have I not said enough, Zeno- 
bia?” 

“I cannot think that this is true,” observed 
Priscilla, who had been gazing at me with 
great, disapproving eyes. ‘‘And I am sure I 
do not wish it to be true!” 

‘‘Poor child!” exclaimed Zenobia, rather 
contemptuously. ‘‘She is a type of woman- 
hood, such as man has spent centuries in mak- 
ing it. He is never content, unless he can 
degrade himself by stooping toward what he 
loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


163 


even more blindness to his own interests than 
profligate disregard of ours!” 

“Is this true?” asked Priscilla, with sim- 
plicity, turning to Hollingsworth. ‘‘Is it all 
true, that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have 
been saying?” 

‘‘No, Priscilla!” answered Hollingsworth, 
with his customary bluntness. ‘‘They have 
neither of them spoken one true word yet.” 

‘‘Do you despise woman?” said Zenobia. 
‘‘Ah, Plollingsworth, that would be most un- 
grateful!” 

‘‘Despise her? No!” cried Hollingsworth, 
lifting his great shaggy head and shaking it at 
us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely. 
‘‘She is the most admirable handiwork of God, 
in her true place and character. Her place 
is at man’s side. Her office, that of the sym- 
pathizer; the unreserved, unquestioning be- 
liever; the recognition, withheld in every other 
manner, but given, in pity, through woman’s 
heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in 
himself; the echo of God’s own voice, pro- 
nouncing, ‘It is well done!’ All the separate 
action of woman is, and ever has been, and 
always shall be, false, foolish, vain, destruc- 
tive of her own best and holiest qualities, void 
of every good effect, and productive of intoler- 
able mischiefs! Man is a wretch without 
woman ; but woman is a monster — and, thank 
Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto 
imaginary monster — without man as her 
acknowledged principal ! As true as I had once 
a mother whom I loved, were there any pos- 


164 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


sible prospect of woman’s taking this social 
stand which some of them — poor, miserable 
abortive creatures, who only dream of such 
things, because they have missed woman’s 
peculiar happiness, or because nature made 
them really neither man nor woman! — if there 
were a chance of their attaining the end 
which these petticoated monstrosities have in 
view, I would call upon my own sex to use its 
physical force, that unmistakable evidence of 
sovereignty, to scourge them back within 
their proper bounds! But it will not be need- 
ful. The heart of true womanhood knows 
where its own sphere is, and never seeks to 
stray beyond it!” 

Never was mortal blessed — if blessing it 
were — with a glance of such entire acquies- 
cence and unquestioning faith, happy in its 
completeness, as our little Priscilla uncon- 
sciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She 
seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into 
her heart, and brood over it in perfect content. 
The very woman whom he pictured — the gen- 
tle parasite, the soft reflection of a more power- 
ful existence — sat there at his feet. 

I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expect- 
ing her to resent — as I felt, by the indignant 
ebullition of my own blood, that she ought — 
this outrageous affirmation of what struck me 
as the intensity of masculine egotism. It cen- 
tered everything in itself, and deprived woman 
of her very soul, her inexpressible and un- 
fathomable all, to make it a mere incident in 
the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


165 


boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots 
like him, really felt. Without intending it, 
he had disclosed the well-spring of all these 
troubled waters. Now if ever it surely be- 
hooved Zenobia to be the champion of her sex. 

But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she 
only looked humbled. Some tears sparkled in 
her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not 
anger. 

“Well, be it so,” was all she said. ‘‘I at 
least, have deep cause to think you right. 
Let man be but manly and god-like, and 
woman is only too ready to become to him 
what you say!” 

I smiled — somewhat bitterly, it is true — in 
contemplation of my own ill-luck. How little 
did these two women care for me, who had 
freely conceded all their claims, and a great 
deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; 
while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of 
his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought 
them both to his feet! 

“Women almost invariably behave thus,” 
thought I. “What does the fact mean? Is it 
their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of 
ages of compelled degradation? And, in either 
case, will it be possible ever to redeem them:” 

An intuition now appeared to possess all the 
party, for that this time, at least, there was no 
more to be said. With one accord, we arose 
from the ground, and made our way through 
the tangled undergrowth toward one of those 
pleasant wood-paths that wound among the 
over-arching trees. Some of the branches 


1C8 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


hung so low as partly to conceal the figures 
that went before from those who followed. 
Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the 
rest of us, and ran along in advance, with as 
much airy activity of spirit as was typified in 
the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flit- 
ting from tree to tree, in the same direction as 
herself. Never did she seem so happy as that 
afternoon. She skipped, and could not help 
it, from very playfulness of heart. 

Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in 
close contiguity, but not with arm in arm. 
Now, just when they had passed the impend- 
ing bough of a birch-tree, I plainly saw Zeno- 
bia take the hand of Hollingsworth in both 
her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall 
again! 

The gesture was sudden, and full of passion ; 
the impulse had evidently taken her by sur- 
prise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt 
before him, or flung herself upon his breast, 
and gasped out, “I love you, Hollingsworth!” 
I could not have been more certain of what it 
meant. They then walked onward, as before. 
But, methought, as the declining sun threw 
Zenobia’s magnified shadow along the path, 
I beheld it tremulous; and the delicate stem of 
the flower which she wore in her hair was like- 
wise responsive to her agitation. 

Priscilla — through the medium of her eyes, 
at least — could not possibly have been aware 
of the gesture above described. Yet, at that 
instant, I saw her droop. The buoyancy, 
which just before had been so bird-like, was 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


167 


utterly departed; the life seemed to pass out 
of her, and even the substance of her figure to 
grow thin and gray. I almost imagined her a 
shadow, fading gradually into the dimness of 
the wood. Her pace became so slow, that 
Hollingsworth and Zenobia passed by, and I, 
without hastening my footsteps, overtook 
her. 

“Come, Priscilla,” said I, looking her in- 
tently in the face, which was very pale and sor- 
rowful, “we must make haste after our friends. 
Do you feel suddenly ill? A moment ago, you 
flitted along so lightly that I was comparing 
you to a bird. Now, on the contrary, it is as if 
you had a heavy heart, and very little strength 
to bear it with. Pray take my arm!” 

“No,” said Priscilla, “I do not think it 
would help me. It is my heart, as you say, 
that makes me heavy; and I know not why. 
Just now, I felt very happy.” 

No doubt it was a kind of sacrilege in me to 
attempt to come within her maidenly mys- 
tery; but, as she appeared to be tossed aside 
by her other friends, or carelessly let fall, like 
a flower which they have done with, I could 
not resist the impulse to take just one peep 
beneath her folded petals. 

“Zenobia and yourself are dear friends, of 
late,” I remarked. “At first, — that first eve- 
ning when you came to us, — she did not 
receive you quite so warmly as might have 
been wished. ” 

“I remember it,” said Priscilla. “No won- 
der she hesitated to love me, who was then a 


168 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or 
beauty, — she being herself so beautiful!” 

“But she loves you now, of course?” sug- 
gested I. “And at this very instant you feel 
her to be your dearest friend?” 

“Why do you ask me that question?” ex- 
claimed Priscilla, as if frightened at the scru- 
tiny into her feelings which I compelled her to 
make. “It somehow puts strange thoughts 
into my mind. But I do love Zenobia dearly! 
If she only loves me half as well, I shall be 
happy!” 

“How is it possible to doubt that, Priscilla?” 
I rejoined. “But observe how pleasantly and 
happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are walk- 
ing together. I call it a delightful spectacle. 
It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has 
found so fit and affectionate a friend! So 
many people in the world mistrust him, — so 
many disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any 
do him justice, or acknowledge him for the 
wonderful man he is, — that it is really a 
blessed thing for him to have won the sympa- 
thy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man 
might be proud of that. Any man, even if he 
be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so 
magnificent a woman. How very beautiful 
Zenobia is! And Hollingsworth knows it, 
too.” 

There may have been some petty malice in 
what I said. Generosity is a very fine thing, 
at a proper time, and within due limits. But 
it is an insufferable bore to see one man en- 
grossing every thought of all the women, and 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


169 


leaving his friend to shiver in outer seclusion, 
without even the alternative of solacing him- 
self with what the more fortunate individual 
has rejected. Yes; it was out of a foolish bit- 
terness of heart that I had spoken. 

“Go on before,” said Priscilla, abruptly, and 
with true feminine imperiousness, which 
heretofore I had never seen her exercise. “It 
pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I 
do not walk so fast as you.” 

With her hand, she made a little gesture of 
dismissal. It provoked me ; yet, on the whole, 
was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla 
had ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled 
moodily homeward, wondering — as I had won- 
dered a thousand times already — how Hollings- 
worth meant to dispose of these two hearts, 
which (plainly to my perception, and, as I 
could not but now suppose, to his) he had en- 
grossed into his own huge egotism. 

There was likewise another subject hardly 
less fruitful of speculation. In what attitude 
did Zenobia present herself to Hollings- 
worth? Was it in that of a free woman, with 
no mortgage on her affections nor claimant to 
her hand, but fully at liberty to surrender both, 
in exchange for the heart and hand which she 
apparently expected to receive? But was it a 
vision that I had witnessed in the wood? Was 
Westervelt a goblin ? W ere those words of pas- 
sion and agony, which Zenobia had uttered in 
my hearing, a mere stage declamation? Were 
they formed of a material lighter than com- 
mon air? Or, supposing them to bear ster- 

12 Blithedale 


170 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


ling weight, was it not a perilous and dreadful 
wrong which she was meditating toward her- 
self and Hollingsworth? 

Arriving nearly at the farm-house, I looked 
back over the long slope of pasture-land, and 
beheld them standing together, in the light of 
sunset, just on the spot where, according to 
the gossip of the Community, they meant to 
build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and for- 
gotten, was lingering in the shadow of the 
wood. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


171 


CHAPTER XV. 

A CRISIS. 

Thus the summer was passing away; — a 
summer of toil, of interest, of something that 
was not pleasure, but which went deep into my 
heart, and there became a rich experience. I 
found myself looking forward to years, if not 
to a lifetime, to be spent on the same system. 
The Community were now beginning to form 
their permanent plans. One of our purposes 
was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we 
called it, after Fourier; but the phraseology 
of those days is not very fresh in my remem- 
brance), where the great and general family 
should have its abiding-place. Individual 
members, too, who made it a point of religion 
to preserve the sanctity of an exclusive home, 
were selecting sites for their cottages, by the 
wood-side, or on the breezy swells, or in the 
sheltered nook of some little valley, according 
as their tastes might lean toward snugness or 
the picturesque. Altogether, by projecting 
our minds outward, we had imparted a show 
of novelty to existence, and contemaplted it as 
hopefully as if the soil beneath our feet had 
not been fathom-deep with the dust of deluded 
generations, on every one of which, as on our- 


172 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


selves, the world had imposed itself as a 
hitherto unwedded bride. 

Hollingsworth and myself had often dis- 
cussed these prospects. It was eas}' to per- 
ceive, however, that he spoke with little or no 
fervor, but either as questioning the fulfilment 
of our anticipations, or, at any rate, with a 
quiet consciousness that it was no personal 
concern of his. Shortly after the scene at 
Eliot’s pulpit, while he and I were repairing 
an old stone fence, I amused myself with sally- 
ing forward into the future time. 

“When we come to be old men,” I said, 
“they will call us uncles, or fathers, — Father 
Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale, — and 
we will look back cheerfully to these early 
days, and make a romantic story for the young 
people (and if a little more romantic than truth 
may warrant, it will be no harm) out of our 
severe trials and hardships. In a century or 
two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical 
personages, or exceedingly picturesque and 
poetical ones, at all events. They will have a 
great public hall, in which your portrait, and 
mine, and twenty other faces that are living 
now, shall be hung up ; and as for me, I will be 
painted in my shirt-sleeves, and with the 
sleeves rolled up, to show my muscular devel- 
opment. What stories will be rife among them 
about our mighty strength!” continued I, lift- 
ing a big stone and putting it into its place; 
“though our posterity will really be far 
stronger than ourselves, after several genera- 
tions of a simple, natural, and active life. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


173 


What legends of Zenobia’s beauty, and Pris- 
cilla’s slender and shadowy grace, and those 
mysterious qualities which make her seem 
diaphanous with spiritual light ! In due course 
of ages we must all figure heroically in an epic 
poem ; and we will ourselves — at least, I will — 
bend unseen over the future poet, and lend him 
inspiration while he writes it.” 

“You seem,” said Hollingsworth, “to be 
trying how much nonsense you can pour out 
in a breath.” 

“I wish you would see fit to comprehend,” 
retorted I, “that the profoundest wisdom must 
be mingled with nine-tenths of nonsense, else 
it is not worth the breath that utters it. But 
I do long for the cottages to be built, that the 
creeping plants may begin to run over them, 
and the moss to gather on the walls, and the 
trees — which we will set out — to cover them 
with a breadth of shadow. This spick-and- 
span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It 
is time, too, for children to be born among 
us. The first-born child is still to come. And 
I shall never feel as if this were a real, practi- 
cal, as well as poetical, system of human life, 
until somebody has sanctified it by death.” 

“A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!” 
said Hollingsworth. 

“As good as any other,” I replied. “I won- 
der, Hollingsworth, who, of all these strong 
men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed 
the first to die. Would it not be well, even 
before we have absolute need of it, to fix 
upon a spot for a cemetery? Let us choose 


174 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, 
for Death’s garden-ground ; and Death shall 
teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By 
our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy 
elegance out of which we will shape our 
funeral rites, and the cheerful allegories which 
we will model into tomb-stones, the final scene 
shall lose its terrors; so that hereafter it may 
be happiness to live, and bliss to die. None 
of us must die young. Yet, should Providence 
ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, 
but afiect us with a tender, delicious, only 
half melancholy and almost smiling pathos!’* 

“That is to say/’ muttered Hollingsworth, 
“you will die like a heathen, as you certainly 
live like one. But, listen to me, Coverdale. 
Your fantastic anticipations make me discern 
all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsub- 
stantial scheme is this, on which we have 
wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do 
you seriously imagine that any such realities 
as you, and many others here, have dreamed 
of, will ever be brought to pass?’’ 

“Certainly I do,’’ said I. “Of course, when 
the reality comes, it will wear the every-day, 
commonplace, dusty, and rather homely garb, 
that reality always does put on. But, setting 
aside the ideal charm, I hold that our highest 
anticipations have a solid footing on common 
sense.’’ 

“You only half believe what you say,’’ re- 
joined Hollingsworth; “and as for me, I 
neither have faith in your dream, nor would 
care the value of this pebble for its realization, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


175 


were that possible. And what more do you 
want of it? It has given you a theme for 
poetry. Let that content you. But now I ask 
you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and 
earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which 
is worth all our strength, and the strength of a 
thousand mightier than we.” 

There can be no need of giving in detail the 
conversation that ensued. It is enough to 
say that Hollingsworth once more brought 
forward his rigid and unconquerable idea; a 
scheme for the reformation of the wicked by 
methods moral, intellectual, and industrial, by 
the sympathy of pure, humble, and yet ex- 
alted minds, and by opening to his pupils the 
possibility of a worthier life than that which 
had become their fate. It appeared, unless 
he over-estimated his own means, that Hol- 
lingsworth held it as his choice (and he did so 
choose) to obtain possession of the very ground 
on which we had planted our Community, and 
which had not yet been made irrevocably ours, 
by purchase. It was just the foundation that 
he desired. Our beginnings might readily 
be adapted to his great end. The arrange- 
ments already completed would work quietly 
into his system. So plausible looked his 
theory, and, more than that, so practical, — 
such an air of reasonableness had he, by 
patient thought, thrown over it, — each seg- 
ment of it was contrived to dove-tail into all 
the rest with such a complicated applicability, 
and so ready was he with a response for every 
objection, that, really, so far as logic and 


X76 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


argument went, he had the matter all his own 
way. 

“But,” said I, “whence can you, having no 
means of your own, derive the enormous capi- 
tal which is essential to this experiment? 
State-street, I imagine, would not draw its 
purse-strings very liberally in aid of such a 
speculation. ” 

“I have the funds — as much, at least, as is 
needed for a commencement — at command,” 
he answered. “They can be produced within a 
month, if necessary.” 

My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could 
only be her wealth which Hollingsworth was 
appropriating so lavishly. And on what con- 
ditions was it to be had? Did she fling it into 
the scheme with the uncalculating generosity 
that characterizes a woman when it is her im- 
pulse to be generous at all? And did she fling 
herself along with it? But Hollingsworth did 
not volunteer an explanation. 

“And have you no regrets,” I inquired, “in 
overthrowing this fair system of our new life, 
which has been planned so deeply, and is now 
beginning to flourish so hopefully around us? 
How beautiful it is, and, so far as we can yet 
see, how practicable ! The ages have waited 
for us, and here we are, the very first that 
have essayed to carry on our mortal existence 
in love and mutual help! Hollingsworth, I 
would be loth to take the ruin of this enter- 
prise upon my conscience. ” 

“Then let it rest wholly upon mine!” he 
answered, knitting his black brows. “I see 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


177 


through the system. It is full of defects, — 
irremediable and damning ones! — from first 
to last, there is nothing else ! I grasp it in my 
hand, and find no substance whatever. There 
is not human nature in it.” 

“Why are you so secret in your operations?” 
I asked. “God forbid that I should accuse 
you of intentional wrong; but the besetting 
sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt 
to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor 
ceases to be the sense of other honorable 
men. At some point of his course — I know not 
exactly when or where — he is tempted to pal- 
ter with the right, and can scarcely forbear per- 
suading himself that the importance of his 
public ends renders it allowable to throw aside 
his private conscience. O, my dear friend, 
beware this error! If you meditate the over- 
throw of this establishment, call together our 
companions, state your design, support it with 
all your eloquence, but allow them an oppor- 
tunity of defending themselves. ” 

“It does not suit me,” said Hollingsworth. 
“Nor is it my duty to do so. ” 

“I think it is,” replied I. 

Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but, 
like fate, inexorably. 

“I will not argue the point,” said he. 
“What I desire to know of you is, — and you 
can tell me in one word, — whether I am to 
look for your co-operation in this great scheme 
of good? Take it up with me! Be my brother 
in it! It offers you (what you have told me, 
over and over again, that you most need) a 

12 Blithedale 


178 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


purpose in life, worthy of the extremest self- 
devotion, — worthy of martyrdom, should God 
so order it! In this view, I present it to you. 
You can greatly benefit mankind. Your 
peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are 
capable of being so wrought into this enter- 
prise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike 
hands with me, and from this moment you 
shall never again feel the languor and vague 
wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied 
man. There may be no more aimless beauty 
in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be 
strength, courage, immitigable will — every- 
thing that a manly and generous nature should 
desire! We shall succeed:' We shall have 
done our best for this miserable world; and 
happiness (which never comes but incidentally) 
will come to us unawares.” 

It seemed his intention to say no more. 
But, after he had quite broken off, his deep 
eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his 
hands to me. 

“Coverdale,” he murmured, ‘‘there is not 
the man in this wide world whom I can love 
as I could you. Do not forsake me!” 

As I looked back upon this scene, through 
the coldness and dimness of so many years, 
there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth 
had caught hold of my heart, and were pull- 
ing it toward him with an almost irresistible 
force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood 
it. But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of 
philanthropy nothing but what was odious. A 
loathsomeness that was to be forever in my 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


179 


daily work! A great, black ugliness of sin, 
which he proposed to collect out of a thousand 
human hearts, and that we should spend our 
lives in an experiment of transmuting it into 
virtue! Had I but touched his extended 
hand, Hollingsworth's magnetism would per- 
haps have penetrated me with his own concep- 
tion of all these matters. But I stood aloof. 
I fortified myself with doubts whether his 
strength of purpose had not been too gigantic 
for his integrity, impelling him to trample on 
considerations that should have been para- 
mount to every other. 

“Is Zenobia to take a partin your enter- 
prise?’’ I asked. 

“She is,’’ said Hollingsworth. 

“She! — the beautiful! — the gorgeous!’’ I 
exclaimed. “And how have you prevailed 
with such a woman to work in this squalid 
element?’’ 

“Through no base methods, as you seem to 
suspect,’’ he answered; “but by addressing 
whatever is best and noblest in her.’’ 

Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. 
But, as he often did so, — generally, indeed, in 
his habitual moods of thought, — I could not 
judge whether it was from any special unwill- 
ingness now to meet my eyes. What it was 
that dictated my next question, I cannot pre- 
cisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably 
into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itself 
so involuntarily, that there must needs have 
been an aptness in it. 

“What is to become of Priscilla?’’ 


180 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and 
with glowing eyes. He could not have shown 
any other kind of expression than that, had he 
meant to strike me with a sword. 

“Why do you bring in the names of these 
women?” said he, after a moment of pregnant 
silence. “What have they to do with the pro- 
posal which I make you? I must have your 
answer [ Will you devote yourself, and sacri- 
fice all to this great end, and be my friend of 
friends forever?” 

“In Heaven’s name, Hollingsworth,” cried 
I, getting angry, and glad to be angry, be- 
cause so only was it possible to oppose his tre- 
mendous concentrativeness and indomitable 
will, “cannot you conceive that a man may 
wish well in the world, and struggle for its 
good, on some other plan than precisely that 
which you have laid down? And will you cast 
off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely 
because he stands upon his right as an individ- 
ual being, and looks at matters through his 
own optics, instead of yours?” 

“Be with me,” said Hollingsworth, “or be 
against me! There is no third choice for 
you.” 

“Take this, then, as my decision,” I an- 
swered. “I doubt the wisdom of your scheme. 
Furthermore, I greatly fear that the methods 
by which you allow yourself to pursue it are 
such as cannot stand the scrutiny of an un- 
biased conscience.” 

“And you will not join me?” 

“No!” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


181 


I never said the word — and certainly can 
never have it to say hereafter — that cost me a 
thousandth part so hard an effort as did that 
one syllable. The heart-pang was not merely 
figurative, but an absolute torture of the 
dreast. I was gazing steadfastly at Hollings- 
worth. It seemed to me that it struck him, too, 
like a bullet. A ghastly paleness — always so 
terrific on a swarthy face — overspread his 
features. There was a convulsive movement 
of his throat, as if he were forcing down some 
words that struggled and fought for utterance. 
Whether words of anger, or words of grief, I 
cannot tell; although, many and many a time, 
I have vainly tormented myself with conjec- 
turing which of the two they were. One other 
appeal to my friendship, — such as once, 
already, Hollingsworth had made, — taking me 
in the revulsion that followed a strenuous 
exercise of opposing will, would completely 
have subdued me. But he left the matter 
there. 

“Well!” said he. 

And that was all ! I should have been thank- 
ful for one word more, even had it shot me 
through the heart, as mine did him. But he 
did not speak it; and, after a few moments, 
with one accord, we set to work again, repair- 
ing the stone fence. Hollingsworth, I ob- 
served, wrought like a Titan ; and, for my own 
part, I lifted stones which at this day — or, in 
a calmer mood, at that one — I should no more 
have thought it possible to stir than to carry 
off the gates of Gaza on my back. 


182 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

LEAVE-TAKINGS. 

A few days after the tragic passage-at-arms 
between Hollingsworth and me, I appeared 
at the dinner-table actually dressed in a coat, 
instead of my customary blouse; with a satin 
cravat, too, a white vest, and several other 
things that made me seem strange and out- 
landish to myself. As for my companions, 
this unwonted spectacle caused a great stir 
upon the wooden benches that bordered either 
side of our homely board. 

“What’s in the wind now, Miles?” asked one 
of them. “Are you deserting us?” 

“Yes, for a week or two,” said I. “It strikes 
me that my health demands a little relaxation 
of labor, and a short visit to the sea-side, 
during the dog-days.” 

“You look like it!” grumbled Silas Foster, 
not greatly pleased with the idea of losing an 
efficient laborer before the stress of the season 
was well over. “Now, here’s a pretty fellow! 
His shoulders have broadened a matter of six 
inches since he came among us; he can do his 
day's work, if he likes, with any man or ox on 
the farm; and yet he talks about going to 
the sea-shore for his health! Well, well, old 
woman,” added he to his wife, “let me have a 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


183 


plateful of that pork and cabbage! I begin to 
feel in a very weakly way. When the others 
have had their turn, you and I will take a 
jaunt to Newport or Saratoga!” 

“Well, but, Mr. Foster,” said I, “you must 
allow me to take a little breath.” 

“Breath!” retorted the old yeoman. “Your 
lungs have the play of a pair of blacksmith’s 
bellows already. What on earth do you want 
more? But go along! I understand the busi- 
ness. We shall never see your face here again. 
Here ends the reformation of the world, so far 
as Miles Coverdale has a hand in it!” 

“By no means,” I replied. “I am resolute 
to die in the last ditch, for the good of the 
cause. ” 

“Die in a ditch!” muttered gruff Silas with 
genuine Yankee intolerance of any intermis- 
sion of toil, except on Sunday, the fourth of 
July, the autumnal cattle-show, Thanksgiving, 
or the annual Fast. “Die in a ditch! I be- 
lieve, in my conscience, you would, if there 
were no steadier means than your own labor 
to keep you out of it!” 

The truth was, that an intolerable discontent 
and irksomeness had come over me. Blithe- 
dale was no longer what it had been. Every- 
thing was suddenly faded. The sun-burnt and 
arid aspect of our woods and pastures, beneath 
the August sky, did but imperfectly symbolize 
the lack of dew and moisture that, since yes- 
terday, as it were, had blighted my fields of 
thought, and penetrated to the innermost and 
shadiest of my contemplative recesses. The 


184 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


change will be recognized by many, who, 
after a period of happiness, had endeavored to 
go on with the same kind of life, in the same 
scene, in spite of the alteration or withdrawal 
of some principal circumstance. They dis- 
cover (what heretofore, perhaps, they had not 
known) that it was this which gave the bright 
color and vivid reality to the whole affair. 

I stood on other terms than before, not only 
with Hollingsworth, but with Zenobia and 
Priscilla. As regarded the two latter, it was 
that dream-like and miserable sort of change 
that denies you the privilege to complain, 
because you can assert no positive injury, nor 
lay your finger on anything tangible. It is a 
matter which you do not see, but feel, and 
which, when you try to analyze it, seems to 
lose its very existence, and resolves itself into 
a sickly humor of your own. Your under- 
standing, possibly, may put faith in this denial. 
But your heart will not so easily rest satisfied. 
It incessantly remonstrates, though, most of 
the time, in a bass-note, which you do not 
separately distinguish; but, now and then, 
with a sharp cry, importunate to be heard, 
and resolute to claim belief. “Things are not 
as they were!” it keeps saying. “You shall 
not impose on me! I will never be quiet! I 
will throb painfully! I will be heavy, and 
desolate, and shiver with cold! For I, your 
deep heart, know when to be miserable, as 
once I knew when to be happy! All is changed 
for us! You are beloved no more!” And, 
were my life to be spent over again, I would 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


185 


invariably lend my ear to this Cassandra of the 
inward depths, however clamorous the music 
and the merriment of a more superficial 
region. 

My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though 
never definitely known to our associates, had 
really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of 
the Community. It was incidental to the 
closeness of relationship into which we had 
brought ourselves, that an unfriendly state of 
feeling could not occur between any two mem- 
bers, without the whole society being more 
or less commoted and made uncomfortable 
thereby. This species of nervous sympathy 
(though a pretty characteristic enough, senti- 
mentally considered, and apparently betoken- 
ing an actual bond of love among us) was yet 
found rather inconvenient in its practical 
operation; mortal tempers being so infirm and 
variable at they are. If one of us happened 
to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the 
tingle was immediately felt on the same side 
of everybody’s head. Thus, even on the sup- 
position that we were far less quarrelsome than 
the rest of the world, a great deal of time was 
necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears. 

Musing on all these matters, I felt an inex- 
pressible longing for at least a temporary 
novelty. I thought of going across the Rocky 
Mountains, or to Europe, or up the Nile; of 
offering myself a volunteer on the Exploring 
Expedition; of taking a ramble of years, no 
matter in what direction, and coming back on 
the other side of the world. Then* should 


186 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


the colonists of Blithedale have established 
their enterprise on a permanent basis, I might 
fling aside my pilgrim staff and dusty shoon, 
and rest as peaceful^ here as elsewhere. Or, 
in case Hollingsworth should occupy the 
ground with his School of Reform, as he now 
purposed, I might plead earthly guilt enough, 
by that time, to give me what I was inclined 
to think the only trustworthy hold on his 
affections. Meanwhile, before deciding on 
any ultimate plan, I determined to remove 
myself to a little distance, and take an exterior 
view of what we had all been about. 

In truth, it was dizzy work, amid such fer- 
mentation of opinions as was going on in the 
general brain of the Community. It was a kind 
of Bedlam, for the time being; although out of 
the very thoughts that were wildest and most 
destructive, might grow wisdom holy, calm 
and pure, and that should incarnate itself with 
the substance of a noble and happy life. But, 
as matters now were, I felt myself (and, having 
a decided tendency toward the actual, I never 
liked to feel it) getting quite out of my reckon- 
ing, with regard to the existing state of the 
world. I was beginning to lose the sense of 
what kind of a world it was, among innumer- 
able schemes of what it might or ought to be. 
It was impossible, situated as we were, not to 
imbibe the idea that everything in nature and 
human existence was fluid, or fast becoming 
so; that the crust of the earth in many places 
was broken, and its whole surface portent- 
uously upheaving; that it was a day Of crisis, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


187 


and that we ourselves were in the critical vor- 
tex. Our great globe floated in the atmos- 
phere of infinite space like an unsubstantial 
bubble. No sagacious man will long retain 
his sagacity, if he live exclusively among 
reformers and progressive people, without 
periodically returninginto the settled system of 
things, to correct himself by a new observation 
from that old stand-point. 

It was now time for me, therefore, to go and 
hold a little talk with the conservatives, the 
writers of the North American Review, the 
merchants, the politicians, the Cambridge men, 
and all those respectable old blockheads who 
still, in this intangibility and mistiness of 
affairs, kept a death grip on one or two ideas 
which had not come into vogue since yester- 
day morning. 

The brethren took leave of me with cordial 
kindness; and as for the sisterhood, I had 
serious thoughts of kissing them all round, 
but forbore to do so, because in all such general 
salutations, the penance is fully equal to the 
pleasure. So I kissed none of them; and no- 
body, to say the truth, seemed to expect it. 

“Do you wish me,” I said to Zenobia, “to 
announce in town and at the watering places, 
your purpose to deliver a course of lectures on 
the rights of women?” 

“Women possess no rights,” said Zenobia, 
with a half melancholy smile; “or, at all 
events, only little girls and grandmothers would 
have the force to exercise them.” 

She gave me her hand freely and kindly, and 


188 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


looked at me, I thought, with a pitying 
expression in her eyes; nor was there any 
settled light of joy in them on her own behalf, 
but a troubled and passionate flame, flickering 
and fitful. 

“I regret, on the whole, that you are leaving 
us,” she said; “and all the more, since I feel 
that this phase of our life is finished, and can 
never be lived over again. Do you know Mr. 
Coverdale, that I have been several times on 
the point of making you my confidant, for lack 
of a better and wiser one? But you are too 
young to be my father confessor; and you 
would not thank me for treating you like one 
of those good little handmaidens who share the 
bosom secrets of a tragedy-queen.” 

“I would, at least, be loyal and faithful,” 
answered I; “and would counsel you with an 
honest purpose, if not wisely.” 

“Yes,” said Zenobia, “you would be only too 
wise, too honest. Honesty and wisdom are 
such a delightful pastime, at another person’s 
expense !” 

“Ah! Zenobia,” I exclaimed, “if you would 
but let me speak !” 

“By no means,” she replied, “especially 
when you have just resumed the whole series 
of social conventionalisms, together with that 
straight-bodied coat. I would as lief open my 
heart to a lawyer or a clergyman! No, no, 
Mr. Coverdale ; if I choose a counselor, in the 
present aspect of my affairs, it must be either 
an angel or a madman; and I rather appre- 
hend that the latter would be likeliest of the 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


189 


two to speak the fitting word. It needs a wild 
steersman when we voyage through chaos! 
The anchor is up — farewell!” 

Priscilla, as soon as dinner was over, had 
betaken herself into a corner and set to work 
on a little purse. As I approached her, she let 
her eyes rest on me with a calm, serious look ; 
for with all her delicacy of nerves, there was a 
singular self-possession in Priscilla, and her 
sensibilities seemed to lie sheltered from ordi- 
nary commotion, like the water in a deep well. 

“Will you give me that purse, Priscilla,” 
said I, “as a parting keepsake?” 

“Yes,” she answered, “if you will wait till 
it is finished. ” 

“I must not wait, even for that,” I replied. 
“Shall I find you here on my return?” 

“I never wish to go away,” said she. 

“I have sometimes thought,” observed I, 
smiling, “that you, Priscilla, are a little proph- 
etess; or, at least, that you have spiritual 
intimations respecting matters which are dark 
to us grosser people. If that be the case, I 
should like to ask you what is about to happen ; 
for I am tormented with a strong forboding 
that, were I to return even so soon as to-morrow 
morning, I should find everything changed. 
Have you any impressions of this nature?” 

“Ah, no,” said Priscilla, looking at me 
apprehensively. “If any such misfortune is 
coming, the shadow has not reached me yet. 
Heaven forbid! I should be glad if there 
might never be any change, but one summer 
follows another, and all just like this.” 


190 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“No summer ever came back, and no two 
summers ever were alike,” said I with a 
degree of Orphic wisdom that astonished my- 
self. “Times change, and people change; 
and if our hearts do not change as readily, so 
much the worse for us. Good-bye, Priscilla!” 

I gave her hand a pressure, which I think 
she neither resisted nor returned. Priscilla’s 
heart was deep but of small compass; it had 
room but for a very few dearest ones, among 
whom she never reckoned me. 

On the door-step I met Hollingsworth. I 
had a momentary impulse to hold out my hand, 
or at least to give a parting nod, but resisted 
both. When a real and strong affection has 
come to an end, it is not well to mock the 
sacred past with any show of those common- 
place civilities that belong to ordinary inter- 
course. Being dead henceforth to him, and 
he to me, there could be no propriety in our 
chilling one another with the touch of two 
corpse-like hands, or playing at looks of 
courtesy with eyes that were impenetrable 
beneath the glaze and the film. We passed, 
therefore, as if mutually invisible. 

I can nowise explain what sort of whim, 
prank or perversity it was, that, after all these 
leave-takings, induced me to go to the pig-sty, 
and take leave of the swine! There they lay, 
buried as deeply among the straw as they 
could burrow, four huge black grunters, the 
very symbols of slothful ease and sensual com- 
fort. They were asleep, drawing short and 
heavy breaths, which heaved their big sides up 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


191 


and down. Unclosing their eyes, however, at 
my approach, they looked dimly forth at the 
outer world, and simultaneously uttered a 
gentle grunt; not putting themselves to the 
trouble of an additional breath for that partic- 
ular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary 
inhalation. They were involved and almost 
stifled and buried alive, in their own corporeal 
substance. The very unreadiness and oppres- 
sion wherewith these greasy citizens gained 
breath enough to keep their life-machinery in 
sluggish movement, appeared to make them 
only the more sensible of the ponderous and 
fat satisfaction of their existence. Peeping 
at me, an instant, out of their small, red, 
hardly perceptible eyes, they dropped asleep 
again; yet not so far asleep but that their 
unctuous bliss was still present to them, be- 
twixt dream and reality. 

“You must come back in season to eat part 
of a sparerib," said Silas Foster, giving my 
hand a mighty squeeze. “I shall have these 
fat fellows hanging up by the heels, heads 
downward, pretty soon, I tell you!” 

“O, cruel Silas, what a horrible idea!” cried 
I. “All the rest of us men, women, and live- 
stock, save only these four porkers, are be- 
deviled with one grief or another; they alone 
are happy, — and you mean to cut their throats 
and eat them ! It would be more for the general 
comfort to let them eat us; and bitter and sour 
morsels we should be!” 


192 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE HOTEL. 

Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, 
long before this time, had received some other 
occupant), I established myself, for a day or 
two, in a certain respectable hotel. It was 
situated somewhat aloof from my former track 
in life; my present mood inclining me to avoid 
most of my old companions, from whom I was 
now sundered by other interests, and who 
would have been likely enough to amuse them- 
selves at the expense of the amateur working- 
man. The hotel-keeper put me into a back- 
room of the third story of his spacious 
establishment. The day was lowering, with 
occasional gusts of rain and an ugly-tempered 
east wind, which seemed to come right off 
the chill and melancholy sea, hardly mitigated 
by sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamat- 
ing itself with the dusky element of city 
smoke. All the effeminacy of past days had 
returned upon me at once. Summer as it 
still was, I ordered a coal-fire in the rusty 
grate, and was glad to find myself growing a 
little too warm with an artificial temper- 
ature. 

My sensations were those of a traveler, long 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


193 


sojourning in remote regions, and at length 
sitting down again amid customs once famil- 
iar. There was a newness and an oldness oddly 
combining themselves into one impression. 
It made me acutely sensible how strange a 
piece of mosaic-work had lately been wrought 
into my life. True, if you look at it in one 
way, it had been only a summer in the country. 
But, considered in a profounder relation, it was 
part of another age, a different state of society, 
a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims 
and methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume 
interpolated into the current history which 
time was writing off. At one moment, the 
very circumstances now surrounding me — my 
coal-fire, and the dingy room in the bustling 
hotel — appeared far off and intangible; the 
next instant Blithedale looked vague, as if it 
were at a distance both in time and space, and 
so shadowy that a question might be raised 
whether the whole affair had been anything 
more than the thoughts of a speculative man. 
I had never before experienced a mood that so 
robbed the actual world of its solidity. It 
nevertheless involved a charm, on which — a 
devoted epicure of my own emotions — I re- 
solved to pause, and enjoy the moral sillabub 
until quite dissolved away. 

Whatever had been my taste for solitude 
and natural scenery, yet the thick, foggy, 
stifled element of cities, the entangled life of 
many men together, sordid as it was, and 
empty of the beautiful, took quite as strenuous 
a hold upon my mind. I felt as if there could 

13 Blithedale 


194 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


never be enough of it. Each characteristic 
sound was too suggestive to be passed over 
unnoticed. Beneath and around me I heard 
the stir of the hotel; the loud voices of guests, 
landlord, or barkeeper; steps echoing on the 
stair-case; the ringing of a bell, announcing 
arrivals or departures; the porter lumbering 
past my door with baggage, which he thumped 
down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; 
the lighter feet of chamber-maids scudding 
along the passages ; — it is ridiculous to think 
what an interest they had for me! From the 
street came the tumult of the pavements, per- 
vading the whole house with a continual 
uproar, so broad and deep that only an unac- 
customed ear would dwell upon it. A company 
of the city soldiery, with a full military band, 
marched in front of the hotel, invisible to me 
but stirringly audible both by its foot-tramp 
and the clangor of its instruments. Once or 
twice all the city bells jangled together, 
announcing a fire, which brought out the 
engine-men and their machines, like an army 
with its artillery rushing to battle. Hour by 
hour the clocks in many steeples responded 
one to another. In some public hall, not a 
great way off, there seemed to be an exhibition 
of a mechanical diorama; for, three times 
during the day, occurred a repetition of obstrep- 
erous music, winding up with the rattle of 
imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge 
final explosion. Then ensued the applause of 
the spectators, with clap of hands, and thump 
of sticks, and the energetic pounding of their 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


195 


heels. All this was just as valuable, in its way, 
as the sighing of the breeze among the birch- 
trees that overshadowed Eliot’s pulpit. 

Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into 
this muddy tide of human activity and pas- 
time. It suited me better, for the present, to 
linger on the brink, or hover in the air above 
it. So I spent the first day and the greater 
part of the second in the laziest manner pos- 
sible, in a rocking chair, inhaling the fragrance 
of a series of cigars, with my legs and slippered 
feet horizontally disposed, and in my hand a 
novel purchased of a railroad bibliopolist. 
The gradual waste of my cigar accomplished 
itself with an easy and gentle expenditure of 
breath. My book was of the dullest, yet had a 
sort of sluggish flow, like that of a stream in 
which your boat is as often aground as afloat. 
Had there been a more impetuous rush, a more 
absorbing passion of the narrative, I should 
the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy 
current, and have given myself up to the swell 
and subsidence of my thoughts. But, as it 
was, the torpid life of the book served as an 
unobtrusive accompaniment to the life within 
me and about me. At intervals, however, 
when its effect grew a little too soporific, — not 
for my patience, but for the possibility of 
keeping my eyes open, — I bestirred myself* 
started from the rocking-chair, and looked out 
of the window. 

A gray sky; the weathercock of a steeple, 
that rose beyond the opposite range of build- 
ings, pointing from the eastward; a sprinkle of 


196 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


small, spiteful-looking raindrops on the win- 
dow-pane. In that ebb-tide of my energies, 
had I thought of venturing abroad, these 
tokens would have checked the abortive pur- 
pose. 

After several such visits to the window, I 
found myself getting pretty well acquainted 
with that little portion of the backside of the 
universe which it presented to my view. Over 
against the hotel and its adjacent houses, at 
the distance of forty or fifty yards, was the 
rear of a range of buildings, which appeared 
to be spacious, modern, and calculated for 
fashionable residences. The interval between 
was apportioned into grass-plats, and here and 
there an apology for a garden, pertaining sev- 
erally to these dwellings. There were apple- 
trees and pear and peach-trees, too, the fruit 
on which looked singularly large, luxuriant, and 
abundant ; as well it might, in a situation so 
warm and sheltered, and where the soil had 
doubtless been enriched to a more than natural 
fertility. In two or three places grape-vines 
clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters 
already purple, and promising the richness of 
Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice. The 
blighting winds of our rigid climate could not 
molest these trees and vines; the sunshine, 
though descending late into this area, and too 
early intercepted by the height of the sur- 
rounding houses, yet lay tropically there, even 
when less than temperate in every other 
region. Dreary as was the day, the scene was 
illuminated by not a few sparrows and other 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


197 


birds, which spread their wings, and flitted and 
fluttered, and alighted now here, now there, 
and busily scratched their food out of the 
wormy earth. Most of these winged people 
seemed to have their domicile in a robust and 
healthy buttonwood-tree. It aspired upward, 
high above the roof of the houses, and spread 
a dense head of foliage half across the area. 

There was a cat — as there invariably is, in 
such places — who evidently thought herself 
entitled to all the privileges of forest-life, in 
this close heart of city conventionalisms. I 
watched her creeping along the low, flat roofs 
of the offices, descending a flight of wooden 
steps, gliding among the grass, and besieging 
the buttonwood-tree, with murderous purpose 
against its feathered citizens. But, after all, 
they vrere birds of city breeding, and doubtless 
knew how to guard themselves against the 
peculiar perils of their position. 

Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks 
and crannies, where Nature, like a stray part- 
ridge, hides her head among the long-estab- 
lished haunts of men! It is likewise to be 
remarked, as a general rule, that there is far 
more of the picturesque, more truth to native 
and characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater 
suggestiveness, in the back view of a residence, 
whether in town or country, than in its front. 
The latter is always artificial ; it is meant for 
the world’s eye, and is, therefore, a veil and a 
concealment. Realities keep in the rear, and 
put forward an advance-guard of show and 
humbug. The posterior aspect of any old 


1S8 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


farm-house, behind which a railroad has unex- 
pectedly been opened, is so different from that 
looking upon the immemorial highway, that 
the spectator gets new ideas of rural life and 
individuality in the puff or two of steum-breath 
which shoots him past the premises. In a city, 
the distinction between what is offered to the 
public and what is kept for the family is cer- 
tainly not less striking. 

But, to return to my window, at the back of 
the hotel. Together with a due contemplation 
of the fruit-trees, the grape-vines, the button- 
wood-tree, the cat, the birds, and many other 
particulars, I failed not to study the row of 
fashionable dwellings to which all these apper- 
tained. Here, it must be confessed there was 
a general sameness. From the upper story to 
the first floor, they were so much alike, that I 
could only conceive of the inhabitants as cut 
out on one identical pattern, like little wooden 
toy-people of German manufacture. One long, 
united roof, with its thousands of slates glitter- 
ing in the rain, extended over the whole. After 
the distinctness of separate characters to which 
I hadrecentlybeen accustomed, it perplexed and 
annoyed me not to be able to resolve this com- 
bination of human interests into well-defined 
elements. It seemed hardly worth while for 
more than one of those families to be in exist- 
ence, since they all had the same glimpse of 
the sky, all looked into the same area, all 
received just their equal share of sunshine 
through the front windows, and all listened to 
precisely the same noises of the street on which 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


190 


they boarded. Men are so much alike in their 
nature, that they grow intolerable unless var- 
ied by their circumstances. 

Just about this time, a waiter entered my 
room. The truth was, I had rung the bell and 
ordered a sherry-cobbler. 

“Can you tell me,” I inquired, “what fam- 
ilies reside in any of those houses opposite?” 

“The one right opposite is a rather stylish 
boarding-house,” said the waiter. “Two of 
the gentlemen-boarders keep horses at the 
stable of our establishment. They do things 
in very good style, sir, the people that live 
there. ” 

I might have found out nearly as much for 
myself, on examining the house a little more 
closely. In one of the upper chambers I saw 
a young man in a dressing-gown, standing 
before the glass and brushing his hair, for a 
quarter of an hour together. He then spent 
an equal space of time in the elaborate arrange- 
ment of his cravat, and finally made his appear- 
ance in a dress-coat, which I suspected to be 
newly come from the tailor’s, and now first put 
on for a dinner-party. At a window of the next 
stor} r below, two children, prettily dressed, were 
looking out. By and by, a middle-aged gentle- 
man came softly behind them, kissed the little 
girl, and playfully pulled the little boy’s ear. 
It was a papa, no doubt, just come in from his 
counting-room or office; and anon appeared 
mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he 
had stolen behind the children, and laying her 
hand on his shoulder, to surprise him. Then 


2C0 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


followed a kiss between papa and mamma; but 
a noiseless one, for the children did not turn 
their heads. 

“I bless God for these good folks!” thought 
I to myself. “I have not seen a prettier bit of 
nature, in all my summer in the country, than 
they have shown me here, in a rather stylish 
boarding-house. I will pay them a little more 
attention, by and by.” 

On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran 
along in front of the tall and spacious windows, 
evidently belonging to a back drawing-room ; 
and, far into the interior, through the arch of 
the sliding-doors, I could discern a gleam from 
the windows of the front apartment. There 
were no signs of present occupancy in this 
suite of rooms; the curtains being enveloped in 
a protective covering, which allowed but a 
small portion of their crimson material to be 
seen. But two housemaids were industriously 
at work; so that there was good prospect that 
the boarding-hous'e might not long suffer from 
the absence of its most expensive and profit- 
able guests. Meanwhile, until they should 
appear, I cast my eyes downward to the lower 
regions. There, in the dusk that so early 
settles into such places, I saw the red glow of 
the kitchen-range. The hot cook, or one of 
her subordinates, with a ladle in her hand, 
came to draw a cool breath at the back-door. 
As soon as she disappeared, an Irish man-serv- 
ant, in a white jacket, crept slyly forth, and 
threw away the fragments of a china dish, 
which, unquestionably, he had just broken. 


THE BLITH-EDALE ROMANCE. 


201 


Soon afterward, a lady, showily dressed, with 
a curling front of what must have been false 
hair, and reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue, — 
though my remoteness allowed me only to guess 
at such particulars, — this respectable mistress 
of the boarding-house made a momentary tran- 
sit across the kitchen window, and appeared no 
more. It was her final, comprehensive glance, 
in order to make sure that soup, fish, and flesh, 
were in a proper state of readiness, before the 
serving up of dinner. 

There was nothing else worth noticing 
about the house, unless it be that on the peak 
of one of the dormer-windows which opened 
out of the roof sat a dove, looking very dreary 
and forlorn; insomuch that I wondered why 
she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while 
her kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm 
and comfortable dove-cote. All at once, this 
dove spread her wings, and, launching herself 
in the air, came flying so straight across the 
intervening space that I fully expected her to 
alight directly on my window-sill. In the lat- 
ter part of her course, however, she swerved 
aside, flew upward, and vanished, as did, like- 
wise, the slight, fantastic pathos with which I 
had invested her. 


14 Elithedale 


202 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 

The next day, as soon as I thought of look- 
ing again toward the opposite house, there sat 
the dove again, on the peak of the same dor- 
mer-window! 

It was by no means an early hour, for, the 
preceding evening, I had ultimately mustered 
enterprise enough to visit the theater, had gone 
late to bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my 
remoteness from Silas Foster’s awakening horn. 
Dreams had tormented me, throughout the 
night. The train of thoughts which, for 
months past, had worn a track through my 
mind, and to escape which was one of my chief 
objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading 
remorselessly to and fro in their old footsteps, 
while slumber left me impotent to regulate 
them. It was not till I had quitted my three 
friends that they first began to encroach upon 
my dreams. In those of the last night, Hol- 
lingsworth and Zenobia, standing on either 
side of my bed, had bent across it to exchange 
a kiss of passion. Priscilla, beholding this, — 
for she seemed to be peeping in at the cham- 
ber-window, —had melted gradually away, and 
left only the sadness of her expression in my 
heart. There it still lingered, after I awoke ; 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


203 


one of those unreasonable sadnesses that you 
know not how to deal with, because it involves 
nothing for common sense to clutch. 

It was a gray and dripping forenoon ; gloomy 
enough in town, and still gloomier in the 
haunts to which my recollections persisted in 
transporting me. For, in spite of my efforts 
to think of something else, I thought how the 
gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and 
valleys of our farm; how wet must be the 
foliage that overshadowed the pulpit-rock; 
how cheerless, in such a day, my hermitage, — 
the tree-solitude of my owl-like humors, — in 
the vine-encircled heart of the tall pine ! It 
was a phase of home-sickness. I had wrenched 
myself too suddenly out of an accustomed 
sphere. There was no choice, now, but to bear 
the pang of whatever heart-strings were 
snapped asunder, and that illusive torment 
(like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by 
which a past mode of life prolongs itself into 
the succeeding one. I was full of idle and 
shapeless regrets. The thought impressed 
itself upon me that I had left duties unper- 
formed. With the power, perhaps, to act in 
the place of destiny and avert misfortune from 
my friends, I had resigned them to their fate. 
That cold tendency, between instinct and intel- 
lect, which made me pry with a speculative 
interest into people’s passions and impulses, 
appeared to have gone far toward unhuman- 
izing my heart. 

But a man cannot always decide for himself 
whether his own heart is cold or warm. It now 


204 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


impresses me that, if I erred at all in regard to 
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla, it was 
through too much sympathy, rather than too 
little. 

To escape the irksomeness of these medita- 
tions, I resumed my post at the window. At 
first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. 
The general aspect of affairs was the same as 
yesterday, except that the more decided inclem- 
ency of to-day had driven the sparrows to shel- 
ter, and kept the cat within doors; whence, 
however, she soon emerged, pursued by the 
cook, and with what looked like the better half 
of a roast chicken in her mouth. The young 
man in the dress-coat was invisible; the two 
children, in the story below, seemed to be 
romping about the room, under the superin- 
tendence of a nursery-maid. The damask 
curtains of the drawing-room, on the first 
floor, were now fully displayed, festooned 
gracefully from top to bottom of the windows, 
which extended from the ceiling to the carpet. 
A narrow window, at the left of the drawing- 
room, gave light to what was probably a small 
boudoir, within which I caught the faintest 
imaginable glimpse of a girl’s figure, in airy 
drapery. Her arm was in regular movement, 
as if she were busy with her German worsted, 
or some other such pretty and unprofitable 
handiwork. 

While intent upon making out this girlish 
shape, I became sensible that a figure had 
appeared at one of the windows of the draw- 
ing-room. There was a presentiment in my 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


205 


mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect 
and side-long as it was, had sufficed to convey 
subtle information of the truth. At any rate, 
it was with no positive surprise, but as if I had 
all along expected the incident, that, directing 
my eyes thitherward, I beheld — like a full- 
length picture, in the space between the heavy 
festoons of the window-curtains — no other than 
Zenobia! At the same instant, my thoughts 
made sure of the identity of the figure in the 
boudoir. It could only be Priscilla. 

Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic 
costume which she had heretofore worn, but 
in a fashionable morning- dress. There was, 
nevertheless, one familiar point. She had, as 
usual, a flower in her hair, brilliant and of a 
rare variety, else it had not been Zenobia. 
After a brief pause at the window, she turned 
away, exemplifying, in the few steps that 
removed her out of sight, that noble and 
beautiful motion which characterized her as 
much as any other personal charm. Not one 
woman in a thousand could move so admirably 
as Zenobia. Many women can sit gracefully ; 
some can stand gracefully; and a few, perhaps, 
can assume a series of graceful positions. But 
natural movement is the result and expression 
of the whole being, and cannot be well and 
nobly performed, unless responsive to some- 
thing in the character. I often used to think 
that music — light and airy, wild and passion- 
ate, or the full harmony of stately marches, in 
accordance with her varying mood — should 
have attended Zenobia's footsteps. 


206 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


I waited for her reappearance. It was one 
peculiarity, distinguishing Zenobia from most 
of her sex, that she needed for her moral well- 
being, and never would forego, a large amount 
of physical exercise. At Blithedale, no in- 
clemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever 
impeded her daily walks. Here, in town, she 
probably preferred to tread the extent of the 
two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles 
by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle 
her skirts over the sloppy pavements. Accord - 
ingly, in about the time requisite to pass 
through the arch of the sliding-doors to the 
front window, and to return upon her steps, 
there she stood again, between the festoons of 
crimson curtains. But another personage 
was now added to the scene. Behind Zenobia 
appeared that face which I had first encoun- 
tered in the wood-path; the man who had 
passed, side by side with her, in such mysteri- 
ous familiarity and estrangement, beneath my 
vine-curtained hermitage in the tall pine-tree. 
It was Westervelt. And though he was look- 
ing closely over her shoulder, it still seemed to 
me, as on the former occasion, that Zenobia 
repelled him, — that, perchance, they mutually 
repelled each other, by some incompatibility 
of their spheres. 

This impression, however, might have been 
altogether the result of fancy and prejudice in 
me. The distance was so great as to obliterate 
any play of feature by which I might other- 
wise have been made a partaker of their coun- 
sels. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


207 


There now needed only Hollingsworth and 
old Moodie to complete the knot of characters, 
whom a real intricacy of events, greatly 
assisted by my method of insulating them from 
other relations, had kept so long upon my 
mental stage, as actors in a drama. In itself, 
perhaps, it was no very remarkable event that 
they should thus come across .me, at the mo- 
ment when I imagined myself free. Zenobia, 
as I well knew, had retained an establishment 
in town, and had not unfrequently withdrawn 
herself from Blithedale during brief intervals, 
on one of which occasions she had taken Pris- 
cilla along with her. Nevertheless, there 
seemed something fatal in the coincidence that 
had borne me to this one spot, of all others in 
a great city, and transfixed me there, and 
compelled me again to waste my already wear- 
ied sympathies on affairs which were none of 
mine, and persons who cared little for me. It 
irritated my nerves; it affected me with a kind 
of heart-sickness. After the effort which it 
cost me to fling them off, — after consummating 
my escape, as I thought, from these goblins of 
flesh and blood, and pausing to revive myself 
with a breath or two of an atmosphere in 
which they should have no share, — it was a 
positive despair, to find the same figures array- 
ing themselves before me, and presenting their 
old problem in a shape that made it more 
insoluble than ever. 

I began to long for a catastrophe. If the 
noble temper of Hollingsworth’s soul were 
doomed to be utterly corrupted by the too 


208 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


powerful purpose which had grown out of what 
was noblest in him ; if the rich and generous 
qualities of Zenobia’s womanhood might not 
save her; if Priscilla must perish by her ten- 
derness and faith, so simple and so devout, — 
then be it so! Let it all come! As for me, I 
would look on, as it seemed my part to do, 
understanding^, if my intellect could fathom 
the meaning and the moral, and, at all events, 
reverently and sadly. The curtain fallen, I 
would pass onward with my poor individual 
life, which was now attenuated of much of its 
proper substance, and diffused among many 
alien interests. 

Meanwhile, Zenobia and her companion had 
retreated from the window. Then followed 
an interval, during which I directed my eyes 
toward the figure in the boudoir. Most cer- 
tainly it was Priscilla, although dressed with a 
novel and fanciful elegance. The vague per- 
ception of it, as viewed so far off impressed 
me as if she had suddenly passed out of a chry- 
salis state and put forth wings. Her hands 
were not now in motion. She had dropped 
her work, and sat with her head thrown back, 
in the same attitude that I had seen several 
times before, when she seemed to be listening 
to an imperfectly distinguished sound. 

Again the two figures in the drawing-room 
became visible. They were now a little with- 
drawn from the window, face to face, and, as I 
could see by Zenobia’s emphatic gestures, 
were discussing some subject in which she, at 
least, felt a passionate concern. By and by 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


209 


she broke away and vanished beyond my ken. 
Westervelt approached the window, and leaned 
his forehead against a pane of glass, display- 
ing the sort of smile on his handsome features 
which, when I before met him, had let me into 
the secret of his gold-bordered teeth. Every 
human being, when given over to the devil, is 
sure to have the wizard mark upon him, in one 
form or another. I fancied that this smile, 
with its peculiar revelation, was the devil’s 
signet on the Professor. 

This man, as I had soon reason to know, 
was endowed with a cat-like circumspection ; 
and though precisely the most unspiritual qual- 
ity in the world, it was almost as effective as 
spiritual insight in making him acquainted 
with whatever it suited him to discover. He 
now proved it, considerably to my discomfit- 
ure, by detecting and recognizing me, at my 
post of observation. Perhaps I ought to have 
blushed at being caught in such an evident 
scrutiny of Professor Westervelt and his affairs. 
Perhaps I did blush. Be that as it might, I 
retained presence of mind enough not to make 
my position yet more irksome, by the poltroon- 
ery of drawing back. 

Westervelt looked into the depths of the 
drawing-room and beckoned. Immediately 
afterward, Zenobia appeared at the window, 
with color much heightened, and eyes which, 
as my conscience whispered me, were shooting 
bright arrows, barbed with scorn, across the 
intervening space, directed full at my sensibil- 
ities as a gentleman. If the truth must be 

14 Blithedale 


210 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


told, far as her flight-shot was, those arrows 
hit the mark. She signified her recognition of 
me by a gesture with her head and hand, com- 
prising at ;once a salutation and dismissal. 
The next moment, she administered one of 
those pitiless rebukes which a woman always 
has at hand, ready for an offense (and which 
she so seldom spares, on due occasion), by let- 
ting down a white linen curtain between the 
festoons of the damask ones. It fell like the 
drop-curtain of a theater, in the interval be- 
tween the acts. 

Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir. 
But the dove still kept her desolate perch on 
the peak of the attic-window. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


211 


CHAPTER XIX. 
zenobia’s drawing-room. 

The remainder of the day, so far as I was 
concerned, was spent in meditating on these 
recent incidents. I contrived, and alternately 
rejected, innumerable methods of accounting 
for the presence of Zenobia and Priscilla, and 
the connection of Westervelt with both. It 
must be owned, too, that I had a keen, 
revengeful sense of the insult inflicted by 
Zenobia’s scornful recognition, and more par- 
ticularly by her letting down the curtain ; as 
if such were the proper barrier to be inter- 
posed between a character like hers and a per- 
ceptive faculty like mine. For, was mine a 
mere vulgar curiosity? Zenobia should have 
known me better than to suppose it. She 
could have been able to appreciate that quality 
of the intellect and the heart which impelled 
me (often against my own will, and to the det- 
riment of my own comfort) to live in other 
lives, and to endeavor — by generous sympa- 
thies, by delicate intuitions, by taking note of 
things too slight for record, and by bringing 
my human spirit into manifold accordances with 
the companions whom God assigned me— to 
learn the secret which was hidden even from 
themselves. 


212 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Of all possible observers, methought a 
woman like Zenobia and a man like Hollings- 
worth should have selected me. And, now, 
when the event has long been past, I retain 
the same opinion of my fitness for the office. 
True, I might have condemned them. Had 
I been judge, as well as witness, my sen- 
tence might have been stern as that of destiny 
itself. But, still, no trait of original nobility 
of character, no struggle against temptation, — 
no iron necessity of will, on the one hand, nor 
extenuating circumstance to be derived from 
passion and despair, on the other, — no remorse 
that might coexist with error, even if power- 
less to prevent it, no proud repentance that 
should claim retribution as a meed, — would go 
unappreciated. True, again, I might give my 
full assent to the punishment which was sure 
to follow. But it would be given mournfully, 
and with undiminished love. And, after all 
was finished, I would come, as if to gather up 
the white ashes of those who had perished at 
the stake, and to tell the world — the wrong 
being now atoned for — how much had perished 
there which it had never yet known how to 
praise. 

I sat in my rocking-chair, too far withdrawn 
from the window to expose myself to another 
rebuke like that already inflicted. My r es 
still wandered toward the opposite house, but 
without effecting any new discoveries. Late 
in the afternoon, the weathercock on the 
church- spire indicated a change of wind; the 
sun shone dimly out, as if the golden wine of 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


213 


its beams were mingled half-and-half with 
water. Nevertheless, they kindled up the 
whole range of edifices, threw a glow over the 
windows, glistened on the wet roofs, and 
slowly withdrawing upward, perched upon the 
chimney-tops; thence they took a higher 
flight, and lingered an instant on the tip of the 
spire, making it the final point of more cheer- 
ful light in the whole somber scene. The next 
moment, it was all gone. The twilight fell 
into the area like a shower of dusky snow; and 
before it was quite dark, the gong of the hotel 
summoned me to tea. 

When I returned to my chamber, the glow 
of an astral lamp was penetrating mistly 
through the white curtain of Zenobia’s drawing- 
room. The shadow of a passing figure was 
now and then cast upon this medium, but with 
too vague an outline for even my adventurous 
conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that it 
presented. 

All at once, it occurred to me how very ab- 
surd was my behavior, in thus tormenting 
myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was 
going on within that drawing-room, when it 
was at my option to be personally present 
there. My relations with Zenobia, as yet un- 
changed, — as a familiar friend, and associated 
in the same life-long enterprise, — gave me the 
right, and made it no more than kindly 
courtesy demanded, to call on her. Nothing, 
except our habitual independence of conven- 
tional rules at Blithedale, could have kept me 


214 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


from sooner recognizing this duty. At all 
events, it should now be performed. 

In compliance with this sudden impulse, I 
soon found myself actually within the house, 
the rear of which, for two days past, I had 
been so sedulously watching. A servant took 
my card, and immediately returning, ushered 
me upstairs. On the way I heard a rich, and, 
as it were, triumphant burst of music from a 
piano, in which I felt Zenobia’s character, 
although heretofore I had known nothing of 
her skill upon the instrument. Two or three 
canary-birds, excited by this gush of sound, 
sang piercingly, and did their utmost to pro- 
duce a kindred melody. A bright illumination 
streamed through the door of the front draw- 
ing-room ; and I had barely stepped across the 
threshold before Zenobia came forward to 
meet me, laughing, and with an extended 
hand. 

“Ah, Mr. Coverdale,” said she, still smil- 
ing, but, as 1 thought, with a good deal of 
scornful anger underneath, “it has gratified 
me to see the interest which you continue to 
take in my affairs! I have long recognized 
you as a sort of transcendental Yankee, with 
all the native propensity of your countrymen 
to investigate matters that come within their 
range, but rendered almost poetical, in your 
case, by the refined methods which you adopt 
for its gratification. After all, it was an un- 
justifiable stroke, on my part, — was it not? — 
to let down the window-curtain!” 

“I cannot call it a very wise one,” returned 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


215 


I, with a secret bitterness, which no doubt, 
Zenobia appreciated. ‘‘It is really impossible 
to hide anything, in this world, to say nothing 
of the next. All that we ought to ask, there- 
fore, is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and 
the speculators on our motives, should be 
capable of taking the highest view which the 
circumstances of the case may admit. So 
much being secured, I, for one, would be most 
happy in feeling myself followed everywhere 
by an indefatigable human sympathy.” 

‘‘We must trust for intelligent sympathy to 
our guardian angels, if any there be,” said 
Zenobia. ‘‘As long as the only spectator of 
my poor tragedy is a young man at the window 
of his hotel, I must still claim the liberty to 
drop the curtain. ” 

While this passed, as Zenobia’s hand was 
extended, I had applied the very slightest 
touch of my fingers to her own. In spite of an 
external freedom, her manner made me sen- 
sible that we stood upon no real terms of con- 
fidence. The thought came sadly across me, 
how great was the contrast betwixt this inter- 
view and our first meeting. Then, in the 
warm light of the country fireside, Zenobia had 
greeted me cheerily and hopefully, with a 
full, sisterly grasp of the hand, conveying 
as much kindness in it as other women could 
have evinced by the pressure of both arms 
around my neck, or by yielding a cheek to the 
brotherly salute. The difference was as com- 
plete as between her appearance at that time, 
— so simply attired, and with only the one 


216 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 

superb flower in her hair, — and now, when her 
beauty was set off by all that dress and orna- 
ment could do for it. And they did much. 
Not, indeed, that they created or added any- 
thing to what nature had lavishly done for 
Zenobia. But, those costly robes which she 
had on, those flaming jewels on her neck, 
served as lamps to display the personal advan- 
tages which required nothing less than such an 
illumination to be fully seen. Even her char- 
acteristic flower, though it seemed to be still 
there, had undergone a cold and bright trans- 
figuration ; it was a flower exquisitely imitated 
in jeweler’s work, and imparting the last touch 
that transformed Zenobia into a work of art. 

“I scarcely feel,” I could not forbear saying, 
“as if we had ever met before. How many 
years ago it seems since we last sat beneath 
Eliot’s pulpit, with Hollingsworth extended on 
the fallen leaves, and Priscilla at his feet ! Can 
it be, Zenobia, that you ever really numbered 
yourself with our little band of earnest, 
thoughtful, philanthropic laborers?” 

“Those ideas have their time and place, ” 
she answered, coldly. “But I fancy it must be 
a very circumscribed mind that can find room 
for no others. ” 

Her manner bewildered me. Literally, 
moreover, I was dazzled by the brilliancy of 
the room. A chandelier hung down in the 
center, glowing with I know not how many 
lights, there were separate lamps, also, on two 
or three tables, and on marble brackets, adding 
their white radiance to that of the chandelier. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


217 


The furniture was exceedingly rich. Fresh 
from our old farm-house, with its homely board 
and benches in the dining-room, and a few 
wicker chairs, in the best parlor, it struck me 
that here was the fulfillment of every fantasy 
of an imagination revelling in various methods 
of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pic- 
tures, marbles, vases, — in brief, more shapes of 
luxury than there could be any object in enu- 
merating, except for an auctioneer’s advertise- 
ment, — and the whole repeated and doubled 
by the reflection of a great mirror, which 
showed me Zenobia’s proud figure, likewise, 
and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge, a 
bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a 
positive effort to bear up against the effect 
which Zenobia sought to impose on me. I 
reasoned against her, in my secret mind, and 
strove so to keep my footing. In the gorgeous- 
ness with which she had surrounded herself, — 
in the redundance of personal ornament, which 
the largeness of her physical nature and the 
rich type of her beauty caused to seem so suit- 
able, — I malevolently beheld the true char- 
acter of the woman, passionate, luxurious, 
lacking simplicity, not deeply refined, incap- 
able of pure and perfect taste. 

But, the next instant, she was too powerful 
for all my opposing struggles. I saw how fit 
it was that she should make herself as gorgeous 
as she pleased, and should do a thousand 
things that would have been ridiculous in the 
poor, thin, weakly characters of other women. 
To this day, however, I hardly know whether 


218 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


I then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, 
or whether that were the truer one in which 
she had presented herself at Blithedale. In 
both, there was something like the illusion 
which a great actress flings around her. 

“Have you given up Blithedale forever?” I 
inquired. 

“Why should you think so?” asked she. 

“I cannot tell,” answered I; “except that it 
appears all like a dream that we were ever 
there together. ” 

“It is not so tome,” said Zenobia. “I should 
think it a poor and meager nature, that is 
capable of but one set of forms, and must con- 
vert all the past into a dream merely because 
the present happens to be unlike it. Why 
should we be content with our homely life of a 
few months past, to the exclusion of all other 
modes? It was good; but there are other lives 
as good, or better. Not, you will understand, 
that I condemn those who give themselves up 
to it more entirely than I, for myself, should 
deem it wise to do.” 

It irritated me, this self-complacent, conde- 
scending, qualified approval and criticism of a 
system to which many individuals — perhaps as 
highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia — had 
contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and 
their loftiest aspirations. I determined to 
make proof if there were any spell that would 
exercise her out of the part which she seemed 
to be acting. She should be compelled to give 
me a glimpse of something true ; some nature, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


219 


some passion, no matter whether right or 
wrong, provided it were real. 

“Your allusion to that class of circumscribed 
characters, who can live only in one mode of 
life,” remarked I, coolly, “reminds me of our 
poor friend Hollingsworth. Possibly he was 
in your thoughts when you spoke thus. Poor 
fellow! It is a pity that, by the fault of a nar- 
row education, he should have so completely 
immolated himself to that one idea of his; 
especially as the slightest modicum of common 
sense would teach him its utter impractica- 
bility. Now that I have returned into the 
world, and can look at his project from a dis- 
tance, it requires quite all my real regard for 
this respectable and well-intentioned man to 
prevent me laughing at him, — as I find society 
at large does.” 

Zenobia’s eyes darted lightning; her cheeks 
flushed; the vividness of her expression was 
like the effect of a powerful light flaming up 
suddenly within her. My experiment had 
fully succeeded. She had shown me the true 
flesh and blood of her heart, by thus involun- 
tarily resenting my slight, pitying, half-kind, 
half-scornful mention of the man who was all 
and all with her. She herself probably felt 
this; for it was hardly a moment before she 
tranquilized her uneven breath, and seemed as 
proud and self-possessed as ever. 

“I rather imagine,” said she quietly, “that 
your appreciation falls short of Mr. Hollings- 
worth’s just claims. Blind enthusiasm, absorp- 
tion in one idea, I grant, is generally ridiculous, 


220 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and must be fatal to the respectability of an 
ordinary man; it requires a very high and 
powerful character to make it otherwise. But 
a great man — as, perhaps you do not know — 
attains his normal condition only through the 
inspiration of one great idea. As a friend of 
Mr. Hollingsworth, and, at the same time, a 
calm observer, I must tell you that he seems 
to me such a man. But you are very pardon- 
able for fancying him ridiculous. Doubtless, 
he is so — to you ! There can be no truer test 
of the noble and heroic, in any individual, than 
the degree in which he possesses the faculty of 
distinguishing heroism from absurdity. 1 ' 

I dared make no retort to Zenobia’s conclud- 
ing apothegm. In truth, I admired her fidel- 
ity. It gave me a new sense of Hollingsworth’s 
native power, to discover that his influence 
was no less potent with this beautiful woman, 
here, in the midst of artificial life, than it had 
been at the foot of the gray rock, and among 
the wild birch-trees of the wood path, when 
she so passionately pressed his hand against 
her heart. The great, rude, shaggy, swarthy 
man ! And Zenobia loved him ! 

“Did you bring Priscilla with you?’’ I re- 
sumed. “Do you know I have sometimes fan- 
cied it not quite safe, considering the suscept- 
ibility of her temperament, that she should be 
so constantly within the sphere of a man like 
Hollingsworth. Such tender and delicate 
natures, among your sex, have often, I believe, 
a very adequate appreciation of the heroic 
element in men. But then, again, I should 


THE BLITHEDAL'E ROMANCE. 


221 


suppose them as likely as any other women to 
make a reciprocal impression. Hollingsworth 
could hardly give his affections to a person 
capable of taking an independent stand, but 
only to one whom he might absorb into himself. 
He has certainly shown great tenderness for 
Priscilla.” Zenobia had turned aside. But I 
caught the reflection of her face in the mirror, 
and saw that it was very pale, — as pale, in her 
rich attire, as if a shroud were round her. 

“Priscilla is here,” said she, her voice a little 
lower than usual. “Have not you learned as 
much from your chamber window? Would 
you like to see her?” 

She made a step or two into the back 
drawing-room, and called, 

“Priscilla! Dear Priscilla! 


222 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THEY VANISH. 

Priscilla immediately answered the sum- 
mons, and made her appearance through the 
door of the boudoir. 

I had conceived the idea which I now recog- 
nized as a very foolish one, that Zenobia would 
have taken measures to debar me from an 
interview with this girl, between whom and 
herself there was so utter an opposition of 
their dearest interests, that, on one part or the 
other, a great grief, if not likewise, a great 
wrong, seemed a matter of necessity. But, as 
Priscilla was only a leaf floating on the dark 
current of events, without influencing them by 
her own choice or plan,— as she probably 
guessed not whither the stream was bearing 
her, nor perhaps even felt its inevitable move- 
ment, — there could be no peril of her commun- 
icating to me any intelligence with regard to 
Zenobia’s purposes. 

On perceiving me, she came forward with 
great quietude of manner; and when I held 
out my hand her own moved slightly toward 
it, as if attracted by a feeble degree of mag- 
netism. 

“I am glad to see you, my dear Priscilla,” 
said I, still holding her hand; “but everything 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


223 


that I meet with, now-a-days, makes me worn 
der whether I am awake. You, especially, 
have always seemed like a figure in a dream, 
and now more than ever.” 

‘‘O, there is substance in these fingers o£ 
mine,” she answered, giving my hand the 
faintest possible pressure, and then taking 
away her own. ‘ 4 Why do you call me a dream ? 
Zenobia is much more like one then I ; she is 
so very, very beautiful! And I suppose,” 
added Priscilla, as if thinking aloud, ‘‘every- 
body sees it as I do. ” 

But for my part, it was Priscilla’s beauty, 
not Zenobia’s, of which I was thinking at that 
moment. She was a person who could be quite 
obliterated, so far as beauty went, by anything 
unsuitable in her attire; her charm was not 
positive and material enough to bear up 
against a mistaken choice of color, for instance, 
or fashion. It was safest, in her case, to 
attempt no art of dress ; for it demanded the 
most perfect taste, or else the happiest accident 
in the world to give her precisely the adorn- 
ment which she needed. She was now dressed 
in pure white, set off with some kind of a gauzy 
fabric, which — as I bring up her figure in my 
memory, with a faint gleam on her shadowy 
hair, and her dark eyes bent shyly on mine, 
through all the vanished years — seems to be 
floating about her like a mist. I wondered 
what Zenobia meant by evolving so much 
loveliness out of this poor girl. It was what 
few women could afford to do; for, as I looked 
from one to the other, the sheen and splendor 


224 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


of Zenobia’s presence took nothing from Pris- 
cilla’s softer spell, if it might not rather be 
thought to add to it. 

“What do you think of her?” asked Zenobia. 

I could not understand the look of melan- 
choly kindness with which Zenobia regarded 
her. She advanced a step, and beckoning 
Priscilla near her, kissed her cheek; then, with 
a slight gesture, of repulse, she moved to the 
other side of the room. I followed. 

“She is a wonderful creature,” I said. 
“Ever since she came among us, I have been 
dimly sensible of just this charm which you 
have brought out. But it was never absolutely, 
visible till now. She is as lovely as a flower!’ 

“Well, say so, if you like,” answered Zeno- 
bia. “You are a poet, — at least, as poets go, 
now-a-days, — and must be allowed to make an 
opera-glass of your imagination, when you look 
at women. I wonder, in such Arcadian free- 
dom of falling in love as we have lately 
enjoyed, it never occurred to you to fall in love 
with Priscilla. In society, indeed, a genuine 
American never dreams of stepping across the 
inappreciable air-line which separates one class 
from another. But what was rank to the col- 
onists of Blithedale?” 

“There were other reasons,” I replied, 
“why I should have demonstrated myself an 
ass, had I fallen in love with Priscilla. By the 
by, has Hollingsworth ever seen her in this 
dress?” 

“Why do you bring up his name at every 
turn?” asked Zenobia in an undertone, and 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


225 


with a malign look which wandered from my 
face to Priscilla’s. “You know not what you 
do! It is dangerous, sir, believe me, to tam- 
per thus with earnest human passions, out of 
your own mere idleness, and for your sport. 
I will endure it no longer! Take care that it 
does not happen again ! I warn you!” 

“You partly wrong me, if not wholly,” I 
responded. “It is an uncertain sense of some 
duty to perform, that brings my thoughts, and 
therefore my words, continually to that one 
point. ” 

“O, this stale excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, 
in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated 
me like the hiss of a serpent. “I have often 
heard it before, from those who sought to in- 
terfere with me, and I know precisely wdiat it 
signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent 
curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold- 
blooded criticism, founded on a shallow inter- 
pretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous 
scepticism in regard to any conscience or any 
wisdom, except one’s own; a most irreverent 
propensity to thrust Providence aside, and sub- 
stitute one’s self in its awful place; — out of" 
these, and other motives as miserable as these, 
comes your idea of duty! But, beware, sir! 
With all your fancied acuteness, you step 
blind-fold into these affairs. For any mischief 
that may follow your interference, I hold you 
responsible !” 

It was evident that, with but a little further 
provocation, the lioness would turn to bay; if, 
indeed, such were not her attitude already. I 

15 Blitbedale 


226 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


bowed, and, not very well knowing what else 
to do, was about to withdraw. But, glancing 
again toward Priscilla, who had retreated into 
a corner, there fell upon my heart an intoler- 
able burden of despondency, the purport of 
which I could not tell, but only felt it to bear 
reference to her. I approached her, and held 
out my hand; a gesture, however, to which 
she made no response. It was always one of 
her peculiarities that she seemed to shrink from 
even the most friendly touch, unless it were 
Zenobia’s or Hollingsworth’s. Zenobia, all 
this while, stood watching us, but with a care- 
less expression, as if it mattered very little 
what might pass. 

“Priscilla,” I inquired, lowering my voice, 
“when do you go back to Blithedale?” 

“Whenever they please to take me,” said 
she. 

“Did you come away of your own free 
will?” I asked. 

“I am blown about like a leaf,” she replied. 
“I never have any free will.” 

“Does Hollingsworth know that you are 
here?” said I. 

“He bade me come,” answered Priscilla. 

She looked at me, I thought, with an air of 
surprise, as if the idea were incomprehensible 
that she should have taken this step without 
his agency. 

“What a gripe this man has laid tfpon her 
whole being!” muttered I, between my teeth. 
“Well, as Zenobia so kindly intimates, I have 
no more business here. I wash my hands of 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


227 


it all. On Hollingsworth’s head be the con- 
sequences! Priscilla,” I added, aloud, “I 
know not that ever we may meet again. 
Farewell!” 

As I spoke the word, a carriage had rumbled 
along the street, and stopped before the house. 
The door-bell rang, and steps were immedi- 
ately afterward heard on the staircase. Zeno- 
bia had thrown a shawl over her dress. 

“Mr. Coverdale, ” said she, with cool cour- 
tesy, ‘‘you will perhaps excuse us. We have 
an engagement, and are going out.” 

‘‘Whither?” I demanded. 

‘‘Is not that a little more than you are en- 
titled to inquire!” said she, with a smile. 
‘‘At all events, it does not suit me to tell you. ” 

The door of the drawing-room opened, and 
Westervelt appeared. I observed that he was 
elaborately dressed, as if for some grand enter- 
tainment. My dislike for this man was infin- 
ite. At that moment it amounted to nothing 
less than a creeping of the flesh, as when, feel- 
ing about in a dark place, one touches some- 
thing cold and slimy, and questions what the 
secret hatefulness may be. And still I could 
not but acknowledge that, for personal beauty, 
for polish of manner, for all that externally 
befits a gentleman, there was hardly another 
like him. After bowing to Zenobia, and gra- 
ciously saluting Priscilla in her corner, he 
recognized me by a slight but courteous incli- 
nation. 

‘‘Come, Priscilla,” said Zenobia; ‘‘it is time. 
Mr. Coverdale, good-evening. ” 


228 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


As Priscilla moved slowly forward, I met 
her in the middle of the drawing-room. 

“Priscilla,” said I, in the hearing of them 
all, “do you know whither you are going?” 

“I do not know," she answered. 

“Is it wise to go, and is it your choice to 
go?” I asked. “If not, I am your friend, and 
Hollingsworth’s friend. Tell me so, at once.” 

“Possibly,” observed Westervelt, smiling, 
“Priscilla sees in me an older friend than 
either Mr. Coverdale or Mr. Hollingsworth. 
I shall willingly leave the matter at her 
option. ” 

While thus speaking, he made a gesture of 
kindly invitation, and Priscilla passed me, 
with the gliding movement of a sprite, and 
took his offered arm. He offered the other to 
Zenobia; but she turned her proud and beauti- 
ful face upon him, with a look which — judging 
from what I caught of it in profile — would 
undoubtedly have smitten the man dead, had 
he possessed any heart, or had this glance 
attained to it. It seemed to rebound, however, 
from his courteous visage, like an arrow from 
polished steel. They all three descended the 
stairs; and when I likewise reached the street- 
door, the carriage was already rolling away. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


229 


CHAPTER XXI. 

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 

Thus excluded from everybody’s confidence, 
and attaining no further, by my most earnest 
study, than to an uncertain sense of something 
hidden from me, it would appear reasonable 
that I should have flung off all these alien per- 
plexities. Obviously, my best course was to 
betake myself to new scenes. Here I was only 
an intruder. Elsewhere there might be circum- 
stances in which I could establish a personal 
interest, and people who would respond, with 
a portion of their sympathies, for so much as I 
should bestow of mine. 

Nevertheless, there occurred to me one 
other thing to be done. Remembering old 
Moodie, and his relationship with Priscilla, I 
determined to seek an interview, for the pur- 
pose of ascertaining whether the knot of affairs 
was as inextricable on that side as I found it 
on all others. Being tolerably well acquainted 
with the old man’s haunts, I went, the next 
day, to the saloon of a certain establishment 
about which he often lurked. It was a reput- 
able place enough, affording good entertain- 
ment in the way of meat, drink, and fumiga- 
tion ; and there, in my young and idle days 
and nights, when I was neither nice or wise, I 


230 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


had often amused myself with watching the 
staid humors and sober jollities of the thirsty 
souls around me. 

At my first entrance, old Moodie was not 
there. The more patiently to await him, I 
lighted a cigar, and establishing myself in a 
corner, took a quiet, and, by sympathy, a 
boozy kind of pleasure in the customary life 
that was going forward. The saloon was fitted 
up with a good deal of taste. There were pic- 
tures on the walls, and among them an oil- 
painting of a beef-steak, with such an admir- 
able show of juicy tenderness, that the be- 
holder sighed to think it merely visionary, 
and incapable of ever being put upon a grid- 
iron. Another work of high art was the life- 
like representation of a noble sirloin ; another, 
the hind-quarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs 
and tawny fur; another, the head and shoul- 
ders of a salmon ; and, still more exquisitely 
finished, a brace of canvas-back ducks, in 
which the mottled feathers were depicted with 
the accuracy of a daguerreotype. Some very 
hungry painter, I suppose, had wrought these 
subjects of still life, heightening his imagina- 
tion with his appetite, and earning, it is to be 
hoped, the privilege of a daily dinner off 
whichever of his pictorial viands he liked 
best. Then, there was a fine old cheese, in 
which you could almost discern the mites; and 
some sardines, on a small plate, very richly 
done, and looking as if oozy with the oil in 
which they had been smothered. All these 
things were so perfectly imitated, that you 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


231 


seemed to have the genuine article before you, 
and yet with an indescribable ideal charm ; it 
took away the grossness from what was fleshi- 
est and fattest, and thus helped the life of man, 
even in its earthliest relations, to appear rich 
and noble as well as warm, cheerful, and sub- 
stantial. There were pictures, too, of gallant 
revellers, — those of the old time, — Flemish, 
apparently, — with doublets and slashed sleeves, 
— drinking their wine out of fantastic long- 
stemmed glasses; quaffing joyously, quaffing 
forever, with inaudible laughter and song, 
while the Champagne bubbled immortally 
against their mustaches, or the purple tide of 
Burgundy ran inexhaustibly down their throats. 

But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there 
was a little picture — excellently done, more- 
over — of a ragged, bloated, New England 
toper, stretched out on a bench, in the heavy, 
apoplectic sleep of drunkenness. The death- 
in-life was too well portrayed. You smelt the 
fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope. 
Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, 
that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was but 
imaginary, — a bit of painted canvas, whom no 
delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive 
headache, awaited, on the morrow. 

By this time, it being past eleven o’clock, 
the two barkeepers of the saloon were in pretty 
constant activity. One of these young men 
had a rare faculty in the concoction of gin- 
cocktails. It was a spectacle to behold, how, 
with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the 
contents from one to the other. Never con- 


232 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


veying it awry, nor spilling the least drop, he 
compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed to 
me, to spout forth from one glass and descend 
into the other, in a great parabolic curve, as 
well defined and calculable as a planet’s orbit. 
He had a good forehead, with a particularly 
large development just above the eyebrows; 
fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he had 
educated to this profitable end ; being famous 
for nothing but gin-cocktails, and commanding 
a fair salary by his one accomplishment. 
These cocktails, and other artificial combina- 
tions of liquor (of which there were at least a 
score, though mostly, I suspect, fantastic in 
their differences), were much in favor with the 
younger class of customers, who, at furthest, 
had only reached the second stage of potatory 
life. The staunch old soakers, on the other 
hand, — men who, if put on tap, would have 
yielded a red alcoholic liquor by way of blood, 
— usually confined themselves to plain brandy- 
and-water, gin, or West India rum ; and, often- 
times, they prefaced their dram with some 
medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and 
stomachic qualities of that particular drink. 
Two or three appeared to have bottles of their 
own behind the counter; and, winking one red 
eye to the barkeeper, he forthwith produced 
these choicest and peculiar cordials, which it 
was a matter of great interest and favor, 
among their acquaintances, to obtain a sip of. 

Agreeable to the Yankee habit, under what- 
ever circumstances, the deportment of all 
these good fellows, old or young, v r as decorous 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


233 


and thoroughly correct. They grew only the 
more sober in their cups; there was no con- 
fused babble nor boisterous laughter. They 
sucked in the joyous fire of the decanters, and 
kept it smouldering in their inmost recesses, 
with a bliss known only to the heart which it 
warmed and comforted. Their eyes twinkled 
a little, to be sure ; they hemmed vigorously 
after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit 
of the stomach, as if the pleasant titillation 
there was what constituted the tangible part 
of their enjoyment. In that spot, unquestion- 
ably, and not in the brain, was the acme of 
the whole affair. But the true purpose of their 
drinking — and one that will induce men to 
drink, or do something equivalent, as long as 
this weary world shall endure — was the re- 
newed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful 
sense of things present and to come, with 
which, for about a quarter of an hour, the 
dram permeated their systems. And when 
such quarters of an hour can be obtained in 
some mode less baneful to the great sum of a 
man’s life, — but, nevertheless, with a little 
spice of impropriety, to give it a wild flavor, 
— we temperance people may ring out our bells 
for victory ! 

The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny 
fountain, which threw up its feathery jet 
through the counter, and sparkled down again 
into an oval basin, or lakelet, containing sev- 
eral gold-fishes. There was a bed of bright 
sand at the bottom, strewn with coral and 
rock- work; and the fishes went gleaming 

16 Blithedale 


234 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


about, now turning up the sheen of a golden 
side, and now vanishing into the shadows of the 
water, like the fanciful thoughts that coquet 
with a poet in his dream. Never before, I 
imagine, did a company of water-drinkers 
remain so entirely uncontaminated by the bad 
example around them ; nor could I help won- 
dering that it had not occurred to any freakish 
inebriate to empty a glass of liquor into their 
lakelet. What a delightful idea! Who would 
not be a fish, if he could inhale jollity with the 
essential element of his existence! 

I had began to despair of meeting old 
Moodie, when, all at once, I recognized his 
hand and arm protruding from behind a screen 
that was set up for the accommodation of 
bashful topers. As a matter of course, he had 
one of Priscilla’s little purses, and was quietly 
insinuating it under the notice of a person who 
stood near. This was always old Moodie’s 
way. You hardly ever saw him advancing 
toward you, but became aware of his proxim- 
ity without being able to guess how he had 
come thither. He glided about like a spirit, 
assuming visibility close to your elbow, offer- 
ing his petty trifles of merchandise, remain- 
ing long enough for you to purchase, if so dis- 
posed, and then taking himself off, between 
two breaths, while you happened to be think- 
ing of something else. 

By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often 
controlled me in those more impressible days 
of my life, I was induced to approach this old 
man in a mode as undemonstrative as his own. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


235 


Thus, when, according to his custom, he was 
probably just about to vanish, he found me at 
his elbow. 

“Ah!” said he, with more emphasis than 
was usual with him. “It is Mr. Coverdale!” 

“Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance," 
answered I. “It is some time now since we 
ate our luncheon together at Blithedale, and a 
good deal longer since our little talk together 
at the street-corner.” 

“That was a good while ago,” said the old 
man. 

And he seemed inclined to say not a word 
more. His existence looked so colorless and 
torpid, — so very faintly shadowed on the canvas 
of reality, — that I was half afraid lest he 
should altogether disappear, even while my 
eyes were fixed full upon his figure. He was 
certainly the wretchedest old ghost in the 
world, with his crazy hat, the dingy hanker- 
chief about his throat, his suit of threadbare 
gray, and especially that patch over his right 
eye, behind which he always seemed to be hid- 
ing himself. There was one method, however, 
of bringing him out into somewhat stronger 
relief. A glass of brandy would effect it. 
Perhaps the gentle influence of a bottle of 
claret might do the same. Nor could I think 
it a matter for the recording angel to write 
down against me, if — with my painful con- 
sciousness of the frost in this old man’s blood, 
and the positive ice that had congealed about 
his heart — I should thaw him out, were it only 
for an hour, with the summer warmth of a lit- 


236 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


tie wine. What else could possibly be done 
for him? How else could he be imbued with 
energy enough to hope for a happier state 
hereafter? How else be inspired to say his 
prayers? For there are states of our spiritual 
system when the throb of the soul’s life is too 
faint and weak to render us capable of reli- 
gious aspiration. 

“Mr. Moodie,” said I, “shall we lunch to- 
gether? And would you like to drink a glass 
of wine?” 

His one eye gleamed. He bowed; and it 
impressed me that he grew to be more of a 
man at once, either in anticipation of the wine, 
or as a grateful response to my good fellow- 
ship in offering it. 

“With pleasure,” he replied. 

The barkeeper, at my request, showed us 
into a private room, and soon afterward set 
some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on 
4 the table ; and I saw the old man glance curi- 
ously at the label of the bottle, as if to learn 
the brand. 

“It should be good wine,” I remarked, “if 
it have any right to its label. ” 

“You cannot suppose, sir,” said Moodie, 
Avith a sigh, “that a poor old fellow like me 
knows any difference in wines.” 

And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in 
his preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his first 
cautious sip of the wine, and the gustatory 
skill with which he gave his palate the full ad- 
vantage of it, it was impossible not to recognize 
the connoisseur. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


237 


** I fancy, Mr. Moodie,” said I, “you are a 
much better judge of wines than I have yet 
learned to be. Tell me fairly — did you never 
drink it where the grape grows?” 

“How should that have been, Mr. Cover- 
dale?” answered old Moodie, shyly; but then 
he took courage, as it were, and uttered a 
feeble little laugh. 4 1 The flavor of this wine, ’ ’ 
added he, “and its perfume, still more than its 
taste, makes me remember that I was once a 
young man.” 

“I wish, Mr. Moodie,” suggested I, — not 
that I greatly cared about it, however, but was 
only anxious to draw him into some talk about 
Priscilla and Zenobia, — “I wish, while we sit 
over our wine, you would favor me with a few 
of those youthful reminiscences.” 

“Ah,” said he, shaking his head, “they 
might interest you more than you suppose. 
But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale. If 
this good wine, — though claret, I suppose, is 
not apt to play such a trick, — but if it should 
make my tongue run too freely, I could never 
look you in the face again. ” 

“You never did look me in the face, Mr. 
Moodie,” I replied, “until this very moment.” 

“Ah!” sighed old Moodie. 

It was wonderful, however, what an effect 
the mild grape-juice wrought upon him. It 
was not in the wine, but in the associations 
which it seemed to bring up. Instead of the 
mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed 
air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray 
kennel-rat^than any other living thing, he be- 


238 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


gan to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman. 
Even his garments — especially after I had 
myself quaffed a glass or two — looked less 
shabby than when we first sat down. There 
was, by and by, a certain exuberance and 
elaborateness of gesture and manner, oddly in 
contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of 
him. Anon, with hardly any impulse from 
me, old Moodie began to talk. His communi- 
cations referred exclusively to a long past and 
more fortunate period of his life, with only a 
few unavoidable allusions to the circumstances 
that had reduced him to his present state. 
But. having once got the clue, my subsequent 
researches acquainted me with the main facts 
of the following narrative ; although, in writ- 
ing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a 
trifle of romantic and legendary license, wor- 
thier of a small poet than of a grave biog- 
rapher. 


THE BL1THEDALE ROMANCE. 


239 


CHAPTER XXII. 

FAUNTLEROY. 

Five-and-twenty years ago, at the epoch of 
this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle 
States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy ; 
a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes and 
prodigal expenditure. His home might almost 
be styled a palace ; his habits, in the ordinary 
sense, princely. His whole being seemed to 
have crystallized itself into an external splen- 
dor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the 
world, and had no other life than upon this 
gaudy surface. He had married a lovely 
woman, whose nature was deeper than his 
own. But his affection for her, though it 
showed largely, was superficial like all his 
other manifestations and developments; he did 
not so truly keep this noble creature in his 
heart, as wear her beauty for the most brilliant 
ornament of his outward state. And there 
was born to him a child, a beautiful daughter, 
whom he took from the beneficent hand of God 
with no just sense of her immortal value, but 
as a man already rich in gems would receive 
another jewel. If he loved her it was because 
she shone. 

After Fauntleroy had thus spent a few 
empty years, corruscating continually an un- 


240 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


natural light, the source of it — which was 
merely his gold — began to grow more shallow, 
and finally became exhausted. He saw him- 
self in imminent peril of losing all that had 
heretofore distinguished him; and, conscious 
of no innate worth to fall back upon, he 
recoiled from this calamity, with the instinct 
of a soul shrinking from annihilation. To 
avoid it — wretched man ! — or, rather to defer 
it, if but for a month, a day, or only to procure 
himself the life of a few breaths more amid 
the false glitter which was now less his own 
than ever, — he made himself guilty of a crime. 
It was just the sort of crime, growing 
out of its artificial state, which society (un- 
less it should change its entire constitution 
for this man’s unworthy sake) neither could 
nor ought to pardon. More safely might it 
pardon murder. Fauntleroy’s guilt was dis- 
covered. He fled; his wife perished by the 
necessity of her innate nobleness, in its alliance 
with a being so ignoble; and betwixt her 
mother’s death and her father’s ignominy his 
daughter was left worse than orphaned. 

There was no pursuit after Fauntleroy. His 
family connections, who had great wealth, 
made such arrangements with those whom he 
had attempted to wrong as secured him from 
the retribution that would have overtaken an 
unfriended criminal. The wreck of his estate 
was divided among his creditors. His name, 
in a very brief space, was forgotten by the 
multitude who had passed it so diligently from 
mouth to mouth. Seldom, indeed, was it re- 



The house had been a stately habitation.” — Page 241, 

The Blitliedale Romance. 




THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


241 


called, even by his closest former intimates. 
Nor could it have been otherwise. The man 
had laid no real touch on any mortal’s heart. 
Being a mere image, an optical delusion, 
created by the sunshine of prosperity, it was 
his law to vanish into the shadow of the first 
intervening cloud. He seemed to leave no 
vacancy; a phenomenon which like many 
others that attended his brief career, went far 
to prove the illusiveness of his existence. 

Not, however, that the physical substance 
of Fauntleroy had literally melted into vapor. 
He had fled northward to the New England 
Metropolis, and had taken up his abode under 
another name, in a squalid street or court of 
the older portion of the city. There he dwelt 
among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners, and 
forlorn good people, Irish, and whomsoever 
else were neediest. Many families were clus- 
ered in each house together, above stairs and 
below, in the little peaked garrets, and even 
in the dusky cellars. The house where Faunt- 
leroy paid weekly rent for a chamber and a 
closet had been a stately habitation in its day. 
An old colonial governor had built it, and lived 
there, long ago, and held his levees in a great 
room where now slept twenty Irish bed-fellows ; 
and died in Fauntleroy’s chamber, which his 
embroidered and white-winged ghost still 
haunted. Tattered hangings, a marble hearth, 
traversed with many cracks and fissures, a 
richly-carved oaken mantel- piece, partly 
hacked away for kindling stuff, a stuccoed 
ceiling, defaced with great, unsightly patches 

16 Blithedale 


242 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


of the naked laths, — such was the chamber’s 
aspect, as if, with its splinters and rags of dirty 
splendor, it were a kind of practical gibe at 
this poor, ruined man of show. 

At first, and at irregular intervals, his rela- 
tives allowed Fauntleroy a little pittance to 
sustain life; not from any love, perhaps, but 
lest poverty should compel him, by new 
offences, to add more shame to that with which 
he had already stained them. But he showed 
no tendency to further guilt. His character 
appeared to have been radically changed (as, 
indeed, from its shallowness, it well might) by 
his miserable fate; or, it may be, the traits 
now seen in him were portions of the same 
character, presenting itself in another phase. 
Instead of any longer seeking to live in the 
sight of the world, his impulse was to shrink 
into the nearest obscurity, and to be unseen 
of men, were it possible, even] while standing 
before their eyes. He had no pride; it was all 
trodden in the dust. No ostentation ; for how 
could it survive, when there was nothing left 
of Fauntleroy save penury and shame! His 
very gait demonstrated that he would gladly 
have faded out of view, and have crept about 
invisibly, for the sake of sheltering himself 
from the irksomeness of a human glance. 
Hardly, it was averred, within the memory of 
those who knew him now, had he the hardi- 
hood to show his full front to the world. He 
skulked in corners and crept about in a sort of 
noon-day twilight, making himself gray and 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


243 


misty, at all hours, with his morbid intoler- 
ance of sunshine. 

In his torpid despair, however, he' had done 
an act which that condition of the spirit seems 
to prompt almost as often as prosperity and 
hope. Fauntleroy was again married. He 
had taken to wife a forlorn, meek-spirited, 
feeble young woman, a seamstress, whom he 
found dwelling with her mother in a contiguous 
chamber of the old gubernatorial residence. 
This poor phantom — as the beautiful and noble 
companion of his former life had done — 
brought him a daughter. And some times, 
as from one dream into another, Faun- 
tleroy looked forth out of his present grimy 
environment into that past magnificence, 
and wondered whether the grandee of yester- 
day or the pauper of to-day were real. But, 
in my mind, the one and the other were alike 
impalpable. In truth, it was Fauntleroy’s 
fatality to behold whatever he touched dis- 
solve. After a few years, his second wife (dim 
shadow that she had always been) faded finally 
out of the world, and left Fauntleroy to deal 
as he might with their pale and nervous child. 
And, by this time, among his distant relatives 
— with whom he had grown a weary thought, 
linked with contagious infamy, and which they 
were only too willing to get rid of — he was 
himself supposed to be no more. 

The younger child, like his elder one, might 
be considered as the true offspring of both 
parents, and as the reflection of their state. 
She was a tremulous little creature, shrinking 


244 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


involuntarily from all mankind, but in timid- 
ity, and no sour repugnance. There was a 
lack of human substance in her; it seemed as 
if, were she to stand up in a sunbeam, it would 
pass right through her figure, and trace out 
the cracked and dusty window-panes upon the 
naked floor. But, nevertheless, the poor child 
had a heart; and from her mother’s gentle 
character, she had inherited a profound and 
still capacity of affection. And so her life was 
one of love. She bestowed it partly on her 
father, but in greater part on an idea. 

For Fauntleroy, as they sat by their cheer- 
less fireside, — which was no fireside, in truth, 
but only a rusty stove, — had often talked to the 
little girl about his former wealth, the noble 
loveliness of his first wife, and the beautiful 
child whom she had given him. Instead of 
the fairy tales which other parents tell, he told 
Priscilla this. And, out of the loneliness of 
her sad little existence, Priscilla’s love grew, 
and tended upward, and twined itself persever- 
ingly around this unseen sister; as a grape- 
vine might strive to clamber out of a gloomy 
hollow among the rocks, and embrace a young 
tree standing in the sunny warmth above. It 
was almost like worship, both in its earnestness 
and its humility; nor was it the less humble, — 
though the more earnest, — because Priscilla 
could claim human kindred with the being 
whom she so devoutly loved. As with worship, 
too, it gave her soul the refreshment of a 
purer atmosphere. Save for this singular, this 
melancholy, and yet beautiful affection, the 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


245 


child could hardly have lived; or, had she 
lived, with a heart shrunken for lack of any 
sentiment to fill it, she must have yielded to 
the barren miseries of her position, and have 
grown to womanhood characterless and worth- 
less. But now, amid all the somber coarseness 
of her father’s outward life, and of her own, 
Priscilla had a higher and imaginative life 
within. Some faint gleam thereof was often 
visible upon her face. It was as if, in her 
spiritual visits to her brilliant sister, a portion 
of the latter’s brightness had permeated our 
dim Priscilla, and still lingered, shedding a 
faint illumination through the cheerless cham- 
ber after she came back. As the child grew 
up, so pallid and so slender, and with much 
unaccountable nervousness, and all the weak- 
nesses of neglected infancy still haunting her, 
the gross and simple neighbors whispered 
strange things about Priscilla. The big, red, 
Irish matrons whose innumerable progeny 
swarmed out of the adjacent doors, used to 
mock at the pale western child. They fancied 
— or, at least, affirmed it, between jest and 
earnest — that she was not so solid flesh and 
blood as other children, but mixed largely with 
a thinner element. They called her ghost- 
child and said that she could indeed vanish 
when she pleased, but could never in her 
densest moments, make herself quite visible. 
The sun, at mid-day, would shine through her; 
in the first gray of the twilight, she lost all the 
distinctness of her outline; and, if you fol- 
lowed the dim thing into a dark corner, behold! 


246 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


she was not there. And it was true that Pris- 
cilla had strange ways; strange ways, and 
stranger words, when she uttered any words 
at all. Never stirring out of the old govern- 
or’s dusky house, she sometimes talked of 
distant places and splendid rooms, as if she 
had just left them. Hidden things were visi- 
ble to her (at least, so the people inferred from 
obscure hints escaping unawares out of her 
mouth), and silence was audible. And in all 
the world there was nothing so difficult to be 
endured, by those who had any dark secret to 
conceal, as the glance of Priscilla’s timid and 
melancholy eyes. 

Her peculiarities were the theme of continual 
gossip among the other inhabitants of the 
gubernatorial mansion. The rumor spread 
thence into a wider circle. Those who knew 
old Moodie, as he was now called, used often 
to jeer him, at the very street corners, about 
his daughter’s gift of second sight and proph- 
ecy. It was a period when science (though 
mostly through its empirical professors) was 
bringing forward, anew, a hoard of facts and 
imperfect theories, that had partially won 
credence in elder times, but which modern 
skepticism had swept away as rubbish. These 
things were now tossed up again, out of the 
surging ocean of human thought and experi- 
ence. The story of Priscilla’s preternatural 
manifestations, therefore, attracted a kind of 
notice of which it would have been deemed 
wholly unworthy a few years earlier. One 
day, a gentleman ascended the creaking stair- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


247 


case, and inquired which was old Moodie’s 
chamber-door. And, several times, he came 
again. He was a marvelously handsome man, 
— still youthful, too, and fashionably dressed. 
Except that Priscilla, in those days, had no 
beauty, and, in the languor of her existence, 
had not yet blossomed into womanhood, there 
would have been rich food for scandal in these 
visits; for the girl was unquestionably their 
sole object, although her father was supposed 
always to be present. But, it must likewise 
be added, there was something about Priscilla 
that calumny could not meddle with; and thus 
far was she privileged, either by the prepon- 
derance of what was spiritual, or the thin and 
watery blood that left her cheek so pallid. 

Yet, if the busy tongues of the neighorhood 
spared Priscilla in one way, they made them- 
selves amends by renewed and wilder babble 
on another score. They averred that the 
strange gentleman was a wizard, and that he 
had taken advantage of Priscilla’s lack of 
earthly substance to subject her to himself, as 
his familiar spirit, through whose medium he 
gained cognizance of whatever happened, in 
regions near or remote. The boundaries of 
his power were defined by the verge of the pit 
of Tartarus on the one hand, and the third 
sphere of the celestial world on the other. 
Again, they declared their suspicion that the 
wizard, with all his show of manly beauty, was 
really an aged and wizened figure, or else that 
his semblance of a human body was only a 
necromantic, or perhaps a mechanical contriv- 


248 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


ance, in which a demon walked about. In 
proof of it, however, they could merely instance 
a gold band around his upper teeth, which had 
once been visible to several old women, when 
he smiled at them from the top of the gover- 
nor’s staircase. Of course, this was all absurd- 
ity, or mostly so. But, after every possible 
deduction, there remained certain very mys- 
terious points about the stranger’s character, 
as well as the connection that he established 
with Priscilla. Its nature at that period was 
even less understood than now, when miracles 
of this kind have grown so absolutely stale, 
that I would gladly, if the truth alllowed, dis- 
miss the whole matter from my narrative. 

We must now glance backward, in quest of 
the beautiful daughter of Fauntleroy’s prosper- 
ity. What had become of her? Fauntleroy’s 
only brother, a bachelor, and with no other 
relative so near, had adopted the forsaken 
child. She grew up in affluence, with native 
graces clustering luxuriantly about her. In 
her triumphant progress toward womanhood, 
she was adorned with every variety of femi- 
nine accomplishment. But she lacked a 
mother’s care. With no adequate control, on 
any hand (for a man, however stern, however 
wise, can never sway and guide a female child), 
her character was left to shape itself. There 
was good in it, and evil. Passionate, self- 
willed and imperious, she had a warm and 
generous nature; showing the richness of the 
soil, however, chiefly by the weeds that flour- 
ished in it, and choked up the herbs of grace. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


249 


In her girlhood her uncle died. As Fauntleroy 
was supposed to be likewise dead, and no other 
heir was known to exist, his wealth devolved 
on her, although, dying suddenly, the uncle 
left no will. After his death, there were 
obscure passages in Zenobia’s history. There 
were whispers of an attachment, and even a 
secret marriage, with a fascinating and accom- 
plished but unprincipled young man. The in- 
cidents and appearances, however, which led 
to this surmise, soon passed away, and were 
forgotten. 

Nor was her reputation seriously affected by 
the report. In fact, so great was her native 
power and influence, and such seemed the 
careless purity of her nature, that whatever 
Zenobia did was generally acknowledged as 
right for her to do. The world never criticised 
her so harshly as it does most women who 
transcend its rules. It almost yielded its 
assent, when it beheld her stepping out of the 
common path, and asserting the more exten- 
sive privileges of her sex, both theoretically 
and by her practice. The sphere of ordinary 
womanhood was felt to be narrower than her 
development required. 

A portion of Zenobia’s more recent life is told 
in the foregoing pages. Partly in earnest — 
and, I imagine, as was her disposition, half in 
a proud jest, or in a kind of recklessness that 
had grown upon her, out of some hidden grief, 
— she had given her countenance, and prom- 
ised liberal pecuniary aid, to our experiment of 
a better social state. And Priscilla followed 


250 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


her to Blithedale. The sole bliss of her life 
had been a dream of this beautiful sister, who 
had never so much as known of her existence. 
By this time, too, the poor girl was enthralled 
in an intolerable bondage, from which she 
must either free herself or perish. She 
deemed herself safest near Zenobia, into whose 
large heart she hoped to nestle. 

One evening, months after Priscilla’s depart- 
ure, when Moodie (or shall we call him Faun- 
tleroy?) was sitting alone in the state-chamber 
of the old governor, there came footsteps up 
the staircase. There was a pause on the land- 
ing-place. A lady’s musical yet haughty 
accents were heard making an inquiry from 
some denizen of the house, who had thrust a 
head out of a contiguous chamber. There was 
then a knock at Moodie ’s door. 

“Come in!’* said he. 

And Zenobia entered. The details of the 
interview that followed being unknown to me, 

• — while, notwithstanding, it would be a pity to 
lose the picturesqueness of the situation, — I 
shall attempt to sketch it, mainly from fancy, 
although with some general grounds of sur- 
mise in regard to the old man’s feelings. 

She gazed wonderingly at the dismal cham- 
ber. Dismal to her, who beheld it only for an 
instant; and how much more so to him, into 
whose brain each bare spot on the ceiling, 
every tatter of the paper-hangings, and all the 
splintered carvings of the mantlepiece, seen 
wearily through long years, had worn their 
several prints! Inexpressibly miserable is 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


251 


this familiarity with objects that have been 
from the first disgustful. 

“I have received a strange message,” said 
Zenobia, after a moment’s silence, “request- 
ing, or rather enjoining it upon me, to come 
hither. Rather from curiosity than any other 
motive, — and because, though a woman, I 
have not all the timidity of one, — I have com- 
plied. Can it be you, sir, who thus summoned 
me?” 

“It was, ’’answered Moodie. 

“And what was your purpose?” she contin- 
ued. “You require charity, perhaps? In that 
case, the message might have been more fitly 
worded. But you are old and poor, and age 
and poverty should be allowed their privileges. 
Tell me, therefore, to what extent you need 
my aid. ” 

“Put up your purse,” said the supposed 
mendicant, with an inexplicable smile. 4 4 Keep 
it, — keep all your wealth, — until I demand it 
all, or none! My message had no such end in 
view. You are beautiful, they tell me; and 
I desired to look at you.” 

He took the one lamp that showed the dis- 
comfort and sordidness of his abode, and 
approaching Zenobia, held it up, so as to gain 
the more perfect view of her, from top to toe. 

So obscure was the chamber, that you could 
see the reflection of her diamonds thrown upon 
the dingy wall, and flickering with the rise and 
fall of Zenobia’s breath. It was the splendor 
of these jewels on her neck, like lamps that 
burn before some fair temple, and the jewelled 


252 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


flower in her hair, more than the murky, yel- 
low light, that helped him to see her beauty. 
But he beheld it, and grew proud at heart ; 
his own figure, in spite of his mean habili- 
ments, assumed an air of state and grandeur. 

“It is well,” cried old Moodie. “Keep your 
wealth. You are right worthy of it. Keep 
it, therefore; but with one condition only.” 

Zenobia thought the old man beside himself, 
and was moved with pity. 

“Have you none to care for you?” asked she. 

“No daughter? — no kind-hearted neighbor? 
— no means of procuring the attendance which 
you need? Tell me, once again, can I do noth- 
ing for you?” 

“Nothing,” he replied. “I have beheld 
what I wished. Now leave me. Linger not 
a moment longer, or I may be tempted to say 
what would bring a cloud over that queenly 
brow. Keep all your wealth, but with only 
this one condition : Be kind — be no less kind 
than sisters are — to my poor Priscilla!” 

And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, 
Fauntleroy paced his gloomy chamber, and 
communed with himself as follows: — or, at all 
events, it is the only solution which I can offer 
of the enigma presented in his character: 

“I am unchanged, — the same man as of 
yore!” said he. “True, my brother’s wealth 
— he dying intestate — is legally my own. I 
know it; yet, of my own choice, I live a beg- 
gar, and go meanly clad, and hide myself 
behind a forgotten ignominy. Looks this like 
ostentation? Ah! but in Zenobia I live again! 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


253 


Beholding her, so beautiful, — so fit to be 
adorned with all imaginable splendor of out- 
ward state, — the cursed vanity, which, half a 
lifetime since, dropped off like tatters of once 
gaudy apparel from my debased and ruined 
person, is all renewed for her sake. Were I 
to reappear, my shame would go with me from 
darkness into daylight. Zenobia has the 
splendor, and not the shame. Let the world 
admire her, and be dazzled by her, the brilliant 
child of my prosperity! It is Fauntleroy that 
still shines through her!” 

But then, perhaps, another thought occurred 
to him. 

“My poor Priscilla! And am I just to her, 
in surrendering all to this beautiful Zenobia? 
Priscilla! I love her best, — I love her only! 
— but with shame, not pride. So dim, so 
pallid, so shrinking, — the daughter of my long 
calamity! Wealth were but a mockery in 
Priscilla’s hands. What is its use, except to 
fling a golden radiance around those who 
grasp it! Yet let Zenobia take heed! Pris- 
cilla shall have no wrong!” 

But while the man of show thus meditated, 
— that very evening, so far as I can adjust the 
dates of these strange incidents, — Priscilla — 
poor, pallid flower! — was either snatched from 
Zenobia’s hand, or flung wilfully away! 


254 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

A VILLAGE-HALL. 

Well, I betook myself away, and wandered 
up and down, like an exorcised spirit that had 
been driven from its old haunts after a mighty 
struggle. It takes down the solitary pride of 
man, beyond most other things, to find the 
impracticability of flinging aside affections that 
have grown irksome. The bands that were 
silken once are apt to become iron fetters 
when we desire to shake them off. Our souls, 
after all, are not our own. We convey a pro- 
perty in them to those with whom we asso- 
ciate ; but to what extent can never be known, 
until we feel the tug, the agony, of our abort- 
ive effort to resume an exclusive sway over 
ourselves. Thus, in all the weeks of my 
absence, my thoughts continually reverted 
back, brooding over the by-gone months, and 
bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to 
have left a trace of themselves in their pas- 
sage. I spent painful hours in recalling these 
trifles, and rendering them more misty and 
unsubstantial than at first by the quantity of 
speculative musing thus kneaded in with 
them. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! 
These three had absorbed my life into them- 
selves. Together with an inexpressible long- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


255 


ing to know their fortunes, there was likewise 
a morbid resentment of my own pain, and a 
stubborn reluctance to come again within their 
sphere. 

All that I learned of them, therefore, was 
comprised in a few brief and pungent squibs, 
such as the newspapers were then in the habit 
of bestowing on our socialist enterprise. There 
was one paragraph, which, if I rightly guessed 
its purport, bore reference to Zenobia, but was 
too darkly hinted to convey even thus much of 
certainty. Hollingsworth, too, with his phil- 
anthropic project, afforded the penny-a-liners 
a theme for some savage and bloody-minded 
jokes; and, considerably to my surprise, they 
affected me with as much indignation as if we 
had still been friends. 

Thus passed several weeks; time long 
enough for my brown and toil-hardened hands 
to reaccustom themselves to gloves. Old 
habits, such as were merely external, returned 
upon me with wonderful promptitude. My 
superficial talk, too, assumed altogether a 
worldly tone. Meeting former acquaintances, 
who showed themselves inclined to ridicule my 
heroic devotion to the cause of human welfare, 
I spoke of the recent phase of my life as indeed 
fair matter for a jest. But I also gave them 
to understand that it was, at most, only an 
experiment, on which I had staked no valuable 
amount of hope or fear. It had enabled me to 
pass the summer in a novel and agreeable way, 
had afforded me some grotesque specimens of 
artificial simplicity, and could not, therefore, 


256 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


so far as I was concerned, be reckoned a failure. 
In no one instance, however, did I voluntarily 
speak of my three friends. They dwelt in a 
profounder region. The more I consider 
myself as I then was, the more do I recognize 
how deeply mjr connection with those three 
had affected all my being. 

As it was already the epoch of annihilated 
space, I might, in the time I was away from 
Blithedale, have snatched a glimpse at Eng- 
land, and been back again. But my wander- 
ings were confined within a very limited 
sphere. I hopped and fluttered, like a bird with 
a string about its leg, gyrating round a small 
circumference, and keeping up a restless activ- 
ity to no purpose. Thus it was still in our 
familiar Massachusetts, — in one of its white 
country-villages, — that I must next particular- 
ize an incident. 

The scene was one of those lyceum-halls, of 
which almost every village has now its own, 
dedicated to that sober and pallid, or rather 
drab- colored, mode of winter evening entertain- 
ment, the lecture. Of late years, this has 
come strangely into vogue, when the natural 
tendency of things would seem to be to substi- 
tute lettered for oral methods of addressing 
the public. But, in halls like this, beside the 
winter course of lectures, there is a rich and 
varied series of other exhibitions. Hither 
comes the ventriloquist, with all his mysterious 
tongues; the thaumanturgist, too, with his 
miraculous transformations of plates, doves, 
and rings, his pancakes smoking in your hat, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


257 


and his cellar of choice liquors represented in 
one small bottle. Here, also, the itinerant 
professor instructs separate classes of ladies 
and gentlemen in physiology, and demon- 
strates his lessons by the aid of real skeletons, 
and manikins in wax, from Paris. Here is to 
be heard the choir of Ethiopian melodists, and 
to be seen the diorama of Moscow or Bunker 
Hill, or the moving panorama of the Chinese 
wall. Here is displayed the museum of wax 
figures, illustrating the wide Catholicism of 
earthly renown, by mixing up heroes and 
statesmen, the pope and the Mormon prophet, 
kings, queens, murderers, and beautiful ladies; 
every sort of person, in short, except authors, 
of whom I never beheld even the most famous 
done in wax. And here, in this many-pur- 
posed hall (unless the selectmen of the village 
chance to have more than their share of the 
Puritanism which, however diversified with 
later patchwork, still gives its prevailing tint 
to New England character), here the company 
of strolling players sets up its little stage, and 
claims patronage for the legitimate drama. 

But, on the autumnal evening which I speak 
of, a number of printed hand-bills, stuck up in 
the bar-room, and on the sign-post of the 
hotel, and on the meeting-house porch, and 
distributed largely through the village — had 
promised the inhabitants an interview with 
that celebrated and hitherto inexplicable 
phenomenon, the Veiled Lady! 

The hall was fitted up with an amphitheatrical 
descent of seats toward a platform, on which 

17 Blithedale 


268 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


stood a desk, two lights, a stool, and a capaci- 
ous antique chair. The audience was of a 
generally decent and respectable character; 
old farmers, in their Sunday black coats, with 
shrewd, hard, sun-dried faces, and a cynical 
humor, oftener than any other expression, in 
their eyes; pretty girls, in many-colored attire; 
pretty young men, — the schoolmaster, the 
lawyer or student at law, the shopkeeper, — all 
looking rather suburban than rural. In these 
days, there is absolutely no rusticity, except 
when the actual labor of the soil leaves its 
earth-mould on the person. There was like- 
wise a considerable proportion of young and 
middle-aged women, many of them stern in 
feature, with marked foreheads, and a very 
definite line of eye-brow; a type of womanhood 
in which a bold intellectual development seems 
to be keeping pace with the progressive deli- 
cacy of the physical constitution. Of all these 
people I took note, at first, according to my 
custom. But I ceased to do so the moment 
that my eyes fell on an individual who sat two 
or three seats below me, immovable, appar- 
ently deep in thought, with his back, of course, 
toward me, and his face turned steadfastly 
upon the platform. 

After sitting a while in contemplation of 
this person’s familiar contour, I was irresist- 
ibly moved to step over the intervening 
benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my 
mouth close to his ear, and address him in a 
sepulchral, melo-dramatic whisper; 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


259 


“Hollingsworth! where have you left Zen- 
obia?” 

His nerves, however, were proof against my 
attack. He turned half around, and looked 
me in the face with great, sad eyes, in which 
there was neither kindness nor resentment, 
nor any perceptible surprise. 

Zenobia, when I last saw her, ’ ’ he answered, 
“was at Blithedale. “ 

He said no more. But there was a great 
deal of talk going on near me, among a knot 
of people who might be considered as repre- 
senting the mysticism, or rather the mystic 
sensuality, of this singular age. The nature 
of the exhibition that was about to take place 
had probably given the turn to their conversa- 
tion. 

I heard, from a pale man in blue spectacles, 
some stranger stories than ever were written 
in a romance; told, too, with a simple, unim- 
aginative steadfastness, which was terribly 
efficacious in compelling the auditor to receive 
them into the category of established facts. 
He cited instances of the miraculous power of 
one human being over the will and passions of 
another; insomuch that settled grief was but a 
shadow beneath the influence of a man posses- 
sing this potency, and the strong love of years 
melted away like a vapor. At the bidding of 
one of these wizards, the maiden, with her 
lover’s kiss still burning on her lips, would 
turn from him with icy indifference; the newly- 
made widow would dig up her buried heart out 
of her young husband’s grave before the sods 


260 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


had taken root upon it; a mother, with her 
babe’s milk in her bosom, would thrust away 
her child. Human character was but soft wax 
in his hands; and guilt, or virtue, only the 
forms into which he should see fit to mould it. 
The religious sentiment was a flame which he 
could blow up with his breath, or a spark that 
he could utterly extinguish. It is unutterable, 
the horror and disgust with which I listened, 
and saw that, if these things were to be 
believed, the individual soul was virtually 
annihilated, and all that is sweet and pure in 
our present life debased, and that the idea of 
man’s eternal responsibility was made ridicu- 
lous, and immortality rendered at once impos- 
sible, and not worth acceptance. But I would 
have perished on the spot, sooner than believe 
it. 

The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the 
wonders that have followed in their train, — 
such as tables upset by invisible agencies, 
bells, self-tolled at funerals, and ghostly music 
performed on jewsharps, — had not yet arrived. 
Alas, my countrymen, methinks we have fallen 
on an evil age! If these phenomena have not 
humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for 
us. What can they indicate, in a spiritual 
way, except that the soul of man is descending 
to a lower point than it has ever before reached 
while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward 
course in the eternal march, and thus bring 
ourselves into the same rangewith beings whom 
death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, 
had degraded below humanity ! To hold inter- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


261 


course with spirits of this order, we must stoop 
and grovel in some element more vile than 
earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist at 
all, are but the shadows of past mortality, 
outcasts, mere refuse-stuff, adjudged unworthy 
of the eternal world, and, on the most favor- 
able supposition, dwindling gradually into 
nothingness. The less we have to say to them 
the better, lest we share their fate! 

The audience now began to be impatient; 
they signified their desire for the entertain- 
ment to commence by thump of sticks and 
stamp of boot-heels. Nor was it a great while 
longer before, in response to their call, there 
appeared a bearded personage in oriental robes, 
looking like one of the enchanters of the 
Arabian Nights. He came upon the platform 
from a side-door, saluted the spectators, not 
with a salaam, but a bow, took his station at 
the desk, and first blowing his nose with a white 
handkerchief, prepared to speak. The environ- 
ment of the homely village-hall, and the 
absence of many ingenious contrivances of 
stage-effect with which the exhibition had 
heretofore been set off, seemed to bring the 
artifice of this character more openly upon the 
surface. No sooner did I behold the bearded 
enchanter, than, laying my hand again on 
Hollingsworth’s shoulder, I whispered in his 
ear, 

“Do you know him?” 

“I never saw the man before,” he muttered, 
without turning his head. 

But I had seen him three times already. 


:62 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Once, on occasion of my first visit to the Veiled 
Lady; a second time, in the wood-path at 
Blithedale; and lastly, in Zenobia’s drawing- 
room. It was Westervelt. A quick associa- 
tion of ideas made me shudder from head to 
foot; and again, like an evil spirit, bringing 
up reminiscences of a man’s sins, I whispered 
a question in Hollingsworth’s ear, — 

“What have you done with Priscilla?” 

He gave a convulsive start, as if I had 
thrust a knife into him, writhed himself round 
on a seat, glared fiercely into my eyes, but 
answered not a word. 

The Professor began his discourse, explan- 
atory of the psychological phenomena, as he 
termed them, which it was his purpose to 
exhibit to the spectators. There remains no 
very distinct impression of it on my memory. 
It was eloquent, ingenious, plausible, with a 
delusive show of spirituality, yet really imbued 
throughout with a cold and dead materialism. 
I shivered, as at a current of chill air issuing 
out of a sepulchral vault, and bringing the 
smell of corruption along with it. He spoke 
of a new era that was dawning upon the world ; 
an era that would link soul to soul, and the 
present life to what we call futurity, with a 
closeness that should finally convert both words 
into one great, mutually conscious brother- 
hood. He described (in a strange, philosoph- 
ical guise, with terms of art, as if it were a 
matter of chemical discovery) the agency by 
which this mighty result was to be effected; 
nor would it have surprised me, had he pre- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


263 


tended to hold up a portion of his universally 
pervasive fluid, as he affirmed it to be, in a 
glass phial. 

At the close of his exordium, the Professor 
beckoned with his hand, — once, twice, thrice, 
— and a figure came gliding upon the platform, 
enveloped in a long veil of silvery whiteness. 
It fell about her like the texture of a summer 
cloud, with a kind of vagueness, so that the 
outline of the form beneath it could not be 
accurately discerned. But the movement of 
the Veiled Lady was graceful, free and unem- 
barrassed, like that of a person accustomed to 
be the spectacle of thousands; or, possibly, a 
blindfold prisoner within the sphere with which 
this dark earthly magician had surrounded 
her, she was wholly unconscious of being the 
central object to all those straining eyes. 

Pliant to his gesture (which had even an 
obsequious courtesy, but at the same time a 
remarkable decisiveness), the figure placed 
itself in the great chair. Sitting there, in such 
visible obscurity, it was perhaps as much like 
the actual presence of a disembodied spirit as 
anything that stage trickery could devise. The 
hushed breathing of the spectators proved how 
high-wrought were their anticipations of the 
wonders to be performed through the medium 
of this incomprehensible creature. I, too, was 
in breathless suspense, but with a far different 
presentiment of some strange event at hand. 

“You see before you the Veiled Lady," said 
the bearded Professor, advancing to the verge 
of the platform. “By the agency of which I 


264 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


have just spoken, she is at this moment in 
communion with the spiritual world. That 
silvery veil is, in one sense, an enchantment, 
having been dipped, as it were, and essentially 
imbued, through the potency of my art, with 
the fluid medium of spirits. Slight and ether- 
eal as it seems, the limitations of time and 
space have no existence within its folds. This 
hall — these hundreds of faces, encompassing 
her within so narrow an apmhitheater — are of 
thinner substance, in her view, than the airiest 
vapor that the clouds are made of. She 
beholds the Absolute!” 

As preliminary to other and far more won- 
derful psychological experiments, the exhibiter 
suggested that some of his auditors should 
endeavor to make the Veiled Lady sensible of 
their presence by such methods — provided 
only no touch were laid upon her person — as 
they might deem best adapted to that end. 
Accordingly, several deep-lunged country-fel- 
lows, who looked as if they might have blown 
the apparition away with a breath, ascended 
the platform. Mutually encouraging one an- 
other, they shouted so close to her ear that the 
veil stirred like a wreath of vanishing mist; 
they smote upon the floor with bludgeons; they 
perpetrated so hideous a clamor, that me- 
thought it might have reached, at least, a little 
way into the eternal sphere. Finally, with 
the assent of the Professor, they laid hold of 
the great chair, and were startled apparently, 
to find it soar upward, as if lighter than the 
air through which it rose. But the Veiled 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


265 


Lady remained seated and motionless, with a 
composure that was hardly less than awful, 
because implying so immeasurable a distance 
betwixt her and these rude persecutors. 

“These efforts are wholly without avail," 
observed the Professor, who had been looking 
on with an aspect of serene indifference. 
“The roar of a battery of cannon would be in- 
audible to the Veiled Lady. And yet, were I 
to will it, sitting in this very hall, she could 
hear the desert wind sweeping over the sands 
as far off as Arabia; the icebergs, grinding 
one against the other in the polar seas; the 
rustle of a leaf in an East Indian forest ; the 
lowest whispered breath of the bashfulest 
maiden in the world, uttering the first confes- 
sion of her love. Nor does there exist the 
moral inducement, apart from my own behest, 
that could persuade her to lift the silvery veil, 
or arise out of that chair." 

Greatly to the Professor’s discomposure, 
however, just as he spoke these words, the 
Veiled Lady arose. There was a mysterious 
tremor that shook the magic veil. The specta- 
tors, it may be, imagined that she was about 
to take flight into that invisible sphere, and to 
the society of those purely spiritual beings 
with whom they reckoned her so near akin. 
Hollingsworth, a moment ago, had mounted 
the platform, and now stood gazing at the fig- 
ure, with a sad intentness, that brought the 
whole power of his great, stern, yet tender 
soul into his glance. 

18 Blithedale 


266 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“Come,” said he, waving his hand toward 
her. “You are safe!” 

She threw off the veil, and stood before that 
multitude of people pale, tremulous, shrinking, 
as if only then had she discovered that a thou- 
sand eyes were gazing at her. Poor maiden ! 
How strangely had she been betrayed! Bla- 
zoned abroad as a wonder of the world, and 
performing what were adjudged as miracles, — 
in the faith of many, a seeress and prophetess; 
in the harsher judgment of others, a mounte- 
bank, — she had kept, as I religiously believe, 
her virgin reserve and sanctity of soul 
throughout it all. Within that encircling veil, 
though an evil hand had flung it over her, there 
was as deep a seclusion as if this forsaken girl 
had, all the while, been sitting under the 
shadow of Eliot’s pulpit, in the Blithedale 
woods, at the feet of him who now summoned 
her to the shelter of his arms. And the true 
heart-throb of a woman’s affection was too 
powerful for the jugglery that had hitherto 
environed her. She uttered a shriek, and fled 
to Hollingsworth, like one escaping from her 
deadliest enemy, and was safe forever! 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


26 ? 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE MASQUERADERS. 

Two nights had passed since the foregoing 
occurrences, when, in a breezy September 
forenoon, I set forth from town, on foot, to- 
ward Blithedale. 

It was the most delightful of all days for a 
walk, with a dash of invigorating ice-temper 
in the air, but a coolness that soon gave place 
to the brisk glow of exercise, while the vigor 
remained as elastic as before. The atmos- 
phere had a spirit and sparkle in it. Each 
breath was like a sip of ethereal wine, tem- 
pered, as I said, with a crystal lump of ice. I 
had started on this expedition in an exceed- 
ingly somber mood, as well befitted one who 
found himself tending toward home, but was 
conscious that nobody would be quite over- 
joyed to greet him there. My feet were hardly 
off the pavement, however, when this morbid 
sensation began to yield to the lively influence 
of air and motion. Nor had I gone far, with 
fields yet green on either side, before my step 
became as swift and light as if Hollingsworth 
were waiting to exchange a friendly hand- 
grip, and Zenobia’s and Priscilla’s open arms 
would welcome the wanderer’s reappearance. 
It has happened to me, on other occasions, as 


283 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


well as this, to prove how a state of physical 
well-being can create a kind of joy, in spite of 
the profoundest anxiety of mind. 

The pathway of that walk still runs along, 
with sunny freshness, through my memory. 
I know not why it should be so. But my men- 
tal eye can even now discern the September 
grass, bordering the pleasant roadside with a 
brighter verdure than while the summer heats 
were scorching it; the trees, too, mostly 
green, although here and there a branch or 
shrub has donned its vesture of crimson and 
gold a week or two before its fellows. I see 
the tufted barberry-bushes, with their small 
clusters of scarlet fruit; the toadstools, like- 
wise, — some spotlessly white, others yellow 
or red, — mysterious growths, springing sud- 
denly from no root or seed, and growing 
nobody can tell how or wherefore. In this 
respect they resembled many of the emotions 
in my breast. And I still see the little rivu- 
lets, chill, clear, and bright, that murmured be- 
neath the road, through subterranean rocks, 
and deepened into mossy pools, where tiny fish 
were darting to and fro, and within which 
lurked the hermit-frog. But no, — I never can 
account for it, that, with a yearning interest 
to learn the upshot of all my story, and return- 
ing to Blithedale for that sole purpose, I should 
examine these things so like a peaceful-bos- 
omed naturalist. Nor why, amid all my sym- 
pathies and fears, there shot, at times, a wild 
exhilaration through my frame. 

Thus I pursued my way along the line of the 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


269 


ancient stone wall that Paul Dudley built, and 
through white villages, and past orchards of 
ruddy apples, and fields of ripening maize, and 
patches of woodland, and all such sweet rural 
scenery as looks the fairest, a little beyond the 
suburbs of a town. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, 
Priscilla! They glided mistily before me, as 
I walked. Sometimes, in my solitude, I 
laughed with the bitterness of self-scorn, re- 
membering how unreservedly I had given up 
my heart and soul to interests that were not 
mine. What had I ever had to do with them? 
And why, being now free, should I take this 
thraldom on me once again? It was both sad 
and dangerous, I whispered to myself, to be 
in too close affinity with the passions, the 
errors and the misfortunes, of individuals who 
stood within a circle of their own, into which, 
if I stepped at all, it must be as an intruder, 
and at a peril that I could not estimate. 

Drawing nearer to Blithedale, a sickness of 
the spirits kept alternating with my flights of 
causeless buoyancy. I indulged in a hundred 
old and extravagant conjectures. Either 
there was no such place as Blithedale, nor 
ever had been, nor any brotherhood of 
thoughtful laborers like what I seemed to recol- 
lect there, or else it was all changed during 
my absence. It had been nothing but dream- 
work and enchantment. I should seek in vain 
for the old farm-house, and for the green- 
sward, the potato-fields, the root-crops, and 
acres of Indian corn, and for all that configu- 
ration of the land which I had imagined. It 


270 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


would be another spot, and an utter strange- 
ness. 

These vagaries were of the spectral throng 
so apt to steal out of an unquiet heart. They 
partly ceased to haunt me, on my arriving at 
a point whence, through the trees, I began to 
catch glimpses of the Blithedale farm. That 
surely was something real. There was hardly 
a square foot of all those acres on which I had 
not trodden heavily, in one or another kind of 
toil. The curse of Adam’s posterity — and, 
curse or blessing be it, it gives substance to 
the life around us — had first come upon me 
there. In the sweat of my brow I had there 
earned bread and eaten it, and so established 
my claim to be on earth, and my fellowship 
with all the sons of labor. I could have knelt 
down, and have laid my breast against that 
soil. The red clay of which my frame was 
moulded seemed nearer akin to those crum- 
bling furrows than to any other portion of the 
world’s dust. There was my home, and there 
might be my grave. 

I felt an invincible reluctance, nevertheless, 
at the idea of presenting myself before my old 
associates, without first ascertaining the state 
in which they were. A nameless foreboding 
weighed upon me. Perhaps, should I know 
all the circumstances that had occurred, I 
might find it my wisest course to turn back, 
unrecognized, unseen, and never look at 
Blithedale more. Had it been evening, I 
would have stolen softly to some lighted win- 
dow of the old farmhouse, and peeped dark- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


271 


ling in, to see all their well-known faces round 
the supper-board. Then, were there a vacant 
seat, I might noiselessly unclose the door, 
glide in, and take my place among them, 
without a word. My entrance might be so 
quiet, my aspect so familiar, that they would 
forget how long I had been away, and suffer 
me to melt into the scene, as a wreath of vapor 
melts into a larger cloud. I dreaded a boister- 
ous greeting. Beholding me at table, Zenobia, 
as a matter of course, would send me a cup of 
tea, and Hollingsworth fill my plate from the 
great dish of pandowdy, and Priscilla, in her 
quiet way, would hand the cream, and others 
help me to the bread and butter. Being one 
of them again, the knowledge of what had 
happened would come to me without a shock. 
For still, at every turn of my shifting fanta- 
sies, the thought stared me in the face, that 
some evil thing had befallen us, or was ready 
to befall. 

Yielding to this ominous impression, I now 
turned aside into the woods, resolving to spy 
out the posture of the Community as craftily 
as the wild Indian before he makes his onset. 
I would go wandering about the outskirts of 
the farm, and, perhaps, catching sight of a 
solitary acquaintance, would approach him 
amid the brown shadows of the trees (a kind 
of medium fit for spirits departed and revisit- 
ant, like myself), and entreat him to tell me 
how all things were. 

The first living creature that I met was a 
partridge which sprung up beneath my feet, 


272 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


and whirred away; the next was a squirrel, 
who chattered angrily at me from an over- 
hanging bough. I trod along by the dark, 
sluggish river, and remember pausing on the 
bank, above one of its blackest and most placid 
pools — (the very spot, with the barkless 
stump of a tree aslantwise over the water, is 
depicting itself to my fancy at this instant), — 
and wondering how deep it was, and if any 
over-laden soul had ever flung its weight of 
mortality in thither, and if it thus escaped the 
burden, or only made it heavier. And per- 
haps the skeleton of the drowned wretch still 
lay beneath the inscrutable depth, clinging to 
some sunken log at the bottom with the gripe 
of its old despair. So slight, however, was 
the track of these gloomy ideas, that I soon 
forgot them in the contemplation of a brood 
of wild ducks, which were floating on the river, 
and anon took flight, leaving each a bright 
streak over the black surface. By and by, I 
came to my hermitage, in the heart of the 
white pine-tree, and clambering up into it, sat 
down to rest. The grapes, which I had 
watched throughout the summer, now dangled 
around me in abundant clusters of the deep- 
est purple, deliciously sweet to the taste, and, 
though wild, yet free from that ungentle 
flavor which distinguishes nearly all our native 
and uncultivated grapes. Methought a wine 
might be pressed out of them possessing a pas- 
sionate zest, and endowed with a new kind of 
intoxicating quality, attended with such 
bacchanalian ecstasies as the tamer grapes of 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


273 


Madeira, France, and the Rhine, are inade 
quate to produce. And I longed to quaff a 
great goblet of it at that moment! 

While devouring the grapes, I looked on all 
sides out of the peep-holes of my hermitage, 
and saw the farm-house, the fields, and almost 
every part of our domain, but not a single 
human figure in the landscape. Some of the 
windows of the house were open, but with no 
more signs of life than in a dead man’s unshut 
eyes. The barn-door was ajar, and swinging 
in the breeze. The big old dog, — he was a 
relic of the former dynasty of the farm, — that 
hardly ever stirred out of the yard, was no- 
where to be seen. What, then, had become of 
all the fraternity and sisterhood? Curious to 
ascertain this point, I let myself down out of 
the tree, and going to the edge of the wood, 
was glad to perceive our herd of cows chewing 
the cud or grazing not far off. I fancied, by 
their manner, that two or three of them recog- 
nized me (as, indeed, they ought, for I had 
milked them and been their chamberlain 
times without number) ; but, after staring me 
in the face a little while, they phlegmatically 
began grazing and chewing their cuds again. 
Then I grew foolishly angry at so cold a re- 
ception, and flung some rotten fragments of 
an old stump at these unsentimental cows. 

Skirting further round the pasture, I heard 
voices and much laughter proceeding from the 
interior of the wood. Voices, male and femi- 
nine; laughter, not only of fresh young 
throats, but the bass of grown people, as if 

18 Blithedale 


274 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


solemn organ-pipes should pour out airs of 
merriment. Not a voice spoke, but I knew it 
better than my own; not a laugh, but its 
cadences were familiar. The wood, in this 
portion of it, seemed as full of jollity as if 
Comus and his crew were holding their revels 
in one of its usually lonesome glades. Steal- 
ing onward as far as I durst, without hazard 
of discovery, I saw a concourse of strange fig- 
ures beneath the overshadowing branches. 
They appeared, and vanished, and came again, 
confusedly, with the streaks of sunlight glim- 
mering down upon them. 

Among them was an Indian chief, with 
blanket, feathers, and war-paint, and uplifted 
tomahawk ; and near him, looking fit to be his 
woodland-bride, the goddess Diana, with the 
crescent on her head, and attended by our big 
lazy dog, in lack of any fleeter hound. Draw- 
ing an arrow from her quiver, she let it fly at 
a venture, and hit the very tree behind which 
I happened to be lurking. Another group con- 
sisted of a Bavarian broom-girl, a negro of the 
Jim Crow order, one or two foresters of the 
middle ages, a Kentucky woodsman in his 
trimmed hunting-shirt, and deerskin leggings, 
and a Shaker elder, quaint, demure, broad- 
brimmed, and square-skirted. Shepherds of 
Arcadia, and allegoric figures from the Faerie 
Queen, were oddly mixed up with these. 
Arm in arm, or otherwise huddled together in 
strange discrepancy, stood grim Puritans, gay 
Cavaliers, and Revolutionary officers with 
three-cornered cocked hats, and queues longer 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


275 


than their swords. A bright-complexioned, 
dark-haired, vivacious little gypsy, with a red 
shawl over her head, went from one group to 
another, telling fortunes by palmistry; and 
Moll Pitcher, the renowned old witch of Lynn, 
broomstick in hand, showed herself promi- 
nently in the midst, as if announcing all these 
apparitions to be the offspring of her necro- 
mantic art. But Silas Foster, who leaned 
against a tree near by, in his customary blue 
frock, and smoking a short pipe, did more to 
disenchant the scene, with his look of shrewd, 
acrid, Yankee observation, than twenty 
witches and necromancers could have done in 
the way of rendering it weird and fantastic. 

A little further off, some old-fashioned 
skinkers and drawers, all with portentiously 
red noses, were spreading a banquet on the 
leaf-strewn earth; while a horned and long- 
tailed gentleman (in whom I recognized the 
fiendish musician first seen by Tam O’Shanter) 
tuned his fiddle, and summoned the whole 
motley rout to a dance, before partaking of 
the festal cheer. So they joined hands in a 
circle, whirling round so swiftly, so madly, and 
so merrily, in time and tune with the Satanic 
music, that their separate incongruities were 
blended all together, and they became a kind 
of entanglement that went nigh to turn one’s 
brain with merely looking at it. Anon they 
stopped all of a sudden, and staring at one an- 
other’s figures, set up a roar of laughter; 
whereat a shower of the September leaves 
(which, all day long, had been hesitating 


276 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


whether to fall or no) were shaken off by the 
movement of the air, and came eddying down 
■upon the revelers. 

Then, for lack of breath, ensued a silence; 
at the deepest point of which, tickled by the 
oddity of surprising my grave associates in this 
masquerading trim, I could not possibly re- 
frain from a burst of laughter on my own sepa- 
rate account. 

“Hush!” I heard the pretty gypsy fortune- 
teller say. “Who is that laughing?” 

“Some profane intruder!” said the goddess 
Diana. “I shall send an arrow through his 
heart, or change him into a stag, as I did 
Actaeon, if he peeps from behind the trees!” 

“Me take his scalp!” cried the Indian chief, 
'brandishing his tomahawk, and cutting a great 
caper in the air. 

“I’ll root him in the earth with a spell that I 
have at my tongue’s end!” squeaked Moll 
Pitcher. “And the green moss shall grow all 
over him, before he gets free again!” 

“The voice was Miles Coverdale’s, ” said the 
fiendish fiddler, with a whisk of his tail and a 
toss of his horns. “My music has brought him 
hither. He is always ready to dance to the 
devil’s tune!” 

Thus put on the right track, they all recog- 
nized the voice at once, and set up a simul- 
taneous shout. 

“Miles! Miles! Miles Coverdale, where are 
you?” they cried. “Zenobia! Queen Zenobial 
here is one of your vassals lurking in the wood. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


277 


Command him to approach, and pay his 
duty ! ' * 

The whole fantastic rabble forthwith 
streamed off in pursuit of me, so that I was 
like a mad poet hunted by chimeras. Having 
fairly the start of them, however, I succeeded 
in making my escape, and soon left their mer- 
riment and riot at a good distance in the rear. 
Its fainter tones assumed a kind of mournful- 
ness, and were finally lost in the hush and 
solemnity of the wood. In my haste, I stum- 
bled over a heap of logs and sticks that had 
been cut for firewood, a great while ago, by 
som‘e former possessor of the soil, and piled up 
square, in order to be carted or sledded away to 
the farm-house. But, being forgotten, they 
had lain there perhaps fifty years, and possibly 
much longer; until, by the accumulation of 
moss, and the leaves falling over them and de- 
caying there, from autumn to autumn, a green 
mound was formed, in which the softened out- 
line of the wood-pile was still perceptible. In 
the fitful mood that then swayed in my mind, 
I found something strangely affecting in this 
simple circumstance. I imagined the long- 
dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and 
children, coming out of their chill graves, and 
essaying to make a fire with this heap of 
mossy fuel ! 

From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost 
in reverie, and neither knew nor cared whither 
I was going, until a low, soft, well-remem- 
bered voice spoke, at a little distance. 

“There is Mr. Coverdale!” 


278 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“Miles Coverdale!’’ said another voice, — 
and its tones were very stern. “Let him come 
forward, then!” 

“Yes, Mr. Coverdale,” cried a woman’s 
voice, — clear and melodious, but, just then, 
with something unnatural in its chord, — “you 
are welcome! But you come half an hour too 
late, and have missed a scene which you 
would have enjoyed!” 

I looked up, and found myself nigh Eliot’s 
pulpit, at the base of which sat Hollingsworth, 
with Priscilla at his feet, and Zenobia standing 
before them. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


279 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE THREE TOGETHER. 

Hollingsworth was in his ordinary working- 
dress. Priscilla wore a pretty and simple 
gown, with a kerchief about her neck, and a 
calash, which she had flung back from her 
head, leaving it suspended by the strings. 
But Zenobia (whose part among the maskers, 
as may be supposed, was no inferior one) ap- 
peared in a costume of fanciful magnificence, 
with her jeweled flower as the central orna- 
ment of what resembled a leafy crown, or cor- 
onet. She represented the oriental princess 
by whose name we were accustomed to know 
her. Her attitude was free and noble; yet, if 
a queen’s, it was not that of a queen triumph- 
ant, but dethroned, on trial for her life, or, 
perchance, condemned, already. The spirit 
of the conflict seemed, nevertheless to be 
alive, in her. Her eyes were on fire: her 
cheeks had each a crimson spot, so exceed- 
ingly vivid and marked with so definite an out- 
line, that 1 at first doubted whether it were 
not artificial. In a very brief space, how- 
ever, this idea was shamed by the paleness 
that ensued, as the blood sunk suddenly away. 
Zenobia now looked like marble. 

One always feels this fact, in an instant, 


280 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


when he has intruded on those who love, or 
those who hate, at some acme of their passion 
that puts them into a sphere of their own, 
where no other spirit can pretend to stand on 
equal ground with them. I was confused, — 
affected even with a species of terror, — and 
wished myself away. The intentness of their 
feelings gave them the exclusive property 
of the soil and atmosphere, and left me no 
right to be or breathe there. 

“Hollingsworth, — Zenobia, — I have just 
returned to Blithedale, ” said I, “and had no 
thought of finding you here. We shall meet 
again at the house. I will retire.” 

“This place is free to you,” answered Hol- 
lingsworth. 

“As free as to ourselves,” added Zenobia. 
“This long while past, you have been follow- 
ing up your game, groping for human emo- 
tions in the dark corners of the heart. Had 
you been here a little sooner, you might have 
seen them dragged into the daylight. I could 
even wish to have my trial over again, with 
you standing by to see fair play! Do you know, 
Mr. Coverdale, I have been on trial for my 
life?” 

She laughed while speaking thus. But, in 
truth, as my eyes wandered from one of the 
group to another, I saw in Hollingsworth all 
that an artist could desire for the grim portrait 
of a Puritan magistrate holding inquest of life 
and death in a case of witchcraft ; —in Zenobia, 
the sorceress herself, not aged, wrinkled, and 
decrepit, but fair enough to tempt Satan with 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


281 


a force reciprocal to his own ; — and in Priscilla, 
the pale victim, whose soul and body had been 
wasted by her spells. Had a pile of fagots 
been heaped against the rock, this hint of 
impending doom would have completed the 
suggestive picture. 

“It was too hard upon me,” continued Ze- 
nobia, addressing Hollingsworth, “that judge, 
jury, and accuser, should all be comprehended 
in one man! I demur, as I think the lawyers 
say, to the jurisdiction. But let the learned 
Judge Coverdale seat himself on the top of the 
rock, and you and me stand at its base, side 
by side, pleading our cause before him! There 
might, at least, be two criminals, instead 
of one. ” 

“You force this on me,” replied Hollings- 
worth, looking her sternly in the face. “Did 
I call you hither from among the masquer- 
aders yonder? Do I assume to be your judge? 
No; except so far as I have an unquestion- 
able right of judgment, in order to settle my 
own line of behavior toward those with whom 
the events of life bring me in contact. True, 
I have already judged you, but not on the 
world’s part, — neither do I pretend to pass a 
sentence!” 

“Ah, this is very good!” said Zenobia, with 
a smile. “What strange beings you men are, 
Mr. Coverdale ! — is it not so? It is the simplest 
thing in the world with you to bring a woman 
before your secret tribunals, and judge and 
condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go 
free without a sentence. The misfortune is, 


282 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


that this same secret tribunal chances to be the 
only judgment-seat that a true woman stands 
in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquit- 
tal is equivalent to a death-sentence!" 

The more I looked at them, and the more I 
heard, the stronger grew my impression that 
a crisis had just come and gone. On Hollings- 
worth’s brow it had left a stamp like that of 
irrevocable doom, of which his own will was 
the instrument. In Zenobia’s whole person, 
beholding her more closely, I saw a riotous 
agitation ; the almost delirious disquietude of a 
great struggle, at the close of which the van- 
quished one felt her strength and courage still 
mighty within her, and longed to renew the 
contest. My sensations were as if I had come 
upon a battle-field before the smoke was as yet 
cleared away. 

And what subjects had been discussed here? 
All, no doubt, that for so many months past 
had kept my heart and my imagination idly 
feverish. Zenobia’s whole character and his- 
tory ; the true nature of her mysterious connec- 
tion with Westervelt; her later purposes 
toward Hollingsworth, and, reciprocally, his in 
reference to her; and, finally, the degree in 
which Zenobia had been cognizant of the plot 
against Priscilla, and what, at last, had been 
the real object of that scheme. On these 
points, as before, I was left to my own conjec- 
tures. One thing, only, was certain. Zenobia 
and Hollingsworth were friends no longer. 
If their heartstrings were ever intertwined, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


283 


the knot had been adjudged an entanglement, 
and was now violently broken. 

But Zenobia seemed unable to rest content 
with the matter in the posture which it had 
assumed. 

“Ah! do we part so?” exclaimed she, seeing 
Hollingsworth about to retire. 

“And why not?” said he, with almost rude 
abruptness. “What is there further to be said 
between us?” 

“Well, perhaps nothing,” answered Ze- 
nobia, looking him in the face, and smiling. 
“But we have come, many times before, to 
this gray rock, and we have talked very softly 
among the whisperings of the birch-trees. 
They were pleasant hours! I love to make 
the latest of them, though not altogether so 
delightful, loiter away as slowly as may be. 
And, besides, you have put many queries to 
me at this, which you design to be our last, 
interview; and being driven, as I may ac- 
knowledge, into a corner, I have responded 
with reasonable frankness. But, now, with 
your free consent, I desire the privilege of 
asking a few questions, in my turn. ” 

“I have no concealments,” said Hollings- 
worth. 

“We shall see,” answered Zenobia. “I 
would first inquire whether you have supposed 
me to be wealthy?” 

“On that point,” observed Hollingsworth, 
“I have had the opinion which the world 
holds.” 

“And I held it, likewise,” said Zenobia. 


284 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“Had I not, Heaven is my witness, the knowl- 
edge should have been as free to you as me. 
It is only three days since I knew the strange 
fact that threatens to make me poor; and 
your own acquaintance with it, I suspect, is of 
at least as old a date. I fancied myself 
affluent. You are aware, too, of the disposi- 
tion which I purposed making of the larger 
portion of my imaginary opulence ; — nay, were 
it all, I had not hesitated. Let me ask you, 
further, did I ever propose or intimate any 
terms of compact, on which depended this — 
as the world would consider it — so important 
sacrifice?” 

“You certainly spoke of none,” said Hol- 
lingsworth. 

“Nor meant any,” she responded. “I was 
willing to realize your dream, freely, — gener- 
ously, as some might think, — but, at all events, 
fully, and heedless though it should prove the 
ruin of my fortune. If, in your own thoughts, 
you have imposed any conditions of this expen- 
diture, it is you that must be held responsible 
for whatever is sordid and unworthy in them. 
And now, one other question. Do you love 
this girl? 

“O, Zenobia!” exclaimed Priscilla, shrink- 
ing back, as if longing for the rock to topple 
over and hide her. 

“Do you love her?” repeated Zenobia. 

“Had you asked me that question a short 
time since,” replied Hollingsworth, after a 
pause, during which, it seemed to me, even the 
birch-trees held their whispering breath, “I 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


285 


should have told you — ‘No!’ My feelings for 
Priscilla differed little from those of an elder 
brother, watching tenderly over the gentle 
sister whom God has given him to protect. ” 

“And what is your answer now?’’ persisted 
Zenobia. 

“I do love her!’’ said Hollingsworth, utter 
ing the words with a deep inward breath, 
instead of speaking them outright. “As well 
declare it thus as in any other way. I do 
love her!” 

“Now, God be judge between us,’’ cried 
Zenobia, breaking into sudden passion, “which 
of us two has most mortally offended him ! At 
least, I am a woman, with every fault, it may 
be, that a woman ever had, — weak, vain, un- 
principled (like the most of my sex; for our 
virtues, when we have any, are merely impul- 
sive and intuitive), passionate, too, and pursu- 
ing my foolish and unattainable ends by indi- 
rect and cunning, though absurdly chosen 
means, as an hereditary bond-slave must; 
false, moreover, to the whole circle of good, 
in my reckless truth to the little good I saw 
before me, — but still a woman! A creature 
whom only a little change of earthly fortune, 
a little kinder smile of Him who sent me 
hither, and one true heart to encourage and 
direct me, might have made all that a woman 
can be! But how is it with you? Are you a 
man? No; but a monster! A cold, heart- 
less, self-beginning and self-ending piece of 
mechanism!’’ 

“With what, then, do you charge me?’’ asked 


286 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Hollingsworth, aghast and greatly disturbed 
by this attack. “Show me one selfish end, in 
all 1 ever aimed at, and you may cut it out of 
my bosom with a knife!” 

“It is all self!” answered Zenobia, with still 
intenser bitterness. “Nothing else; nothing 
but self, self, self! The fiend, I doubt not, 
has made his choicest mirth of you, these seven 
years past, and especially in the mad summer 
which we have spent together. I see it now ! 
I am awake, disenchanted, disenthralled ! Self, 
self, self! You have embodied yourself in a 
project. You are a better masquerader than 
the witches and gypsies yonder; for your dis- 
guise is a self-deception. See whither it has 
brought you! First, you aimed a death-blow, 
and a treacherous one, at this scheme of a pur- 
er and higher life, which so many noble spirits 
had wrought out. Then, because Coverdale 
could not be quite your slave, you threw him 
ruthlessly away. And you took me, too, into 
your plan, as long as there was hope of my 
being available, and now fling me aside again, 
a broken tool! But, foremost and blackest of 
your sins, you stifled down your inmost con- 
sciousness! — you did a deadly wrong to your 
own heart! — you were ready to sacrifice this 
girl, whom, if God ever visibly showed a pur- 
pose, he put into your charge, and through 
whom he was striving to redeem you!” 

“This is a woman’s view,” said Hollings- 
worth, growing deadly pale, — “a woman’s, 
whose whole sphere of action is in the heart, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


287 


and who can conceive of no higher nor wider 
one!” 

“Be silent!” cried Zenobia, imperiously. 
“You know neither man nor woman! The 
utmost that can be said in your behalf, — and 
because I would not be wholly despicable in 
my own eyes, but would fain excuse my wasted 
feelings, nor own it wholly a delusion, there- 
fore I say it, — is, that a great and rich heart 
has been ruined in your breast. Leave me, 
now. You have done with me, and I with 
you. Farewell!” 

“Priscilla,” said Hollingsworth, “come.” 

Zenobia smiled ; possibly I did so, too. Not 
often, in human life, has a gnawing sense of 
injury found a sweeter morsel of revenge than 
was conveyed in the tone with which Hollings- 
worth spoke those two words. It was the 
abased and tremulous tone of a man whose 
faith in himself was shaken, and who sought, 
at last, to lean on an affection. Yes; the 
strong man bowed himself, and rested on this 
poor Priscilla! O! could she have failed him, 
what a triumph for the lookers-on ! 

And, at first, I half imagined that she was 
about to fail him. She rose up, stood shiver- 
ing like the birch-leaves that trembled over 
her head, and then slowly tottered, rather than 
walked, toward Zenobia. Arriving at her feet, 
she sank down there, in the very same attitude 
which she had assumed on their first meeting, 
in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Zenobia 
remembered it. 

“Ah, Priscilla!” said she, shaking her head, 


288 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


“how much is changed since then! You kneel 
to a dethroned princess. You, the victorious 
one! But he is waiting for you. Say what 
you wish, and leave me.” 

“We are sisters!” gasped Priscilla. 

I fancied that I understood the word and 
action. It meant the offering of herself, and 
all she had, to be at Zenobia’s disposal. But 
the latter would not take it thus. 

“True, we are sisters!” she replied; and, 
moved by the sweet word, she stooped down 
and kissed Priscilla; but not lovingly, for a 
sense of fatal harm received through her 
seemed to be lurking in Zenobia’s heart. “We 
had one father! You knew it from the first; 
I, but a little while — else some things that 
have chanced might have been spared you. 
But I never wished you harm. You stood 
between me and an end which I desired. I 
wanted a clear path. No matter what I 
meant. It is over now. Do you forgive 
me?” 

“O, Zenobia, ” sobbed Priscilla, “it is I that 
feel like the guilty one!” 

“No, no, poor little thing!” said Zenobia, 
with a sort of contempt. “You have been my 
evil fate; but there never was a babe with 
less strength or will to do an injury. Poor 
child! Methinks you have but a melancholy 
lot before you, sitting all alone in that wide, 
cheerless heart, where, for aught you know, — 
and as I, alas! believe, — the fire which you 
have kindled may soon go out. Ah, the 
thought makes me shiver for you! What will 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


289 


you do, Priscilla, when you find no spark 
among the ashes?” 

“Die!” she answered. 

‘‘That was well said!” responded Zenobia, 
with an approving smile. “There is all a 
woman in your little compass, my poor sister. 
Meanwhile, go with him, and live!” 

She waved her away, with a queenly ges- 
ture, and turned her own face to the rock. I 
watched Priscilla, wondering what judgment 
she would pass between Zenobia and Hollings- 
worth; how interpret his behavior, so as to 
reconcile it with true faith both toward her 
sister and herself ; how compel her love for 
him to keep any terms whatever with her sis- 
terly affection! But, in truth, there was no 
such difficulty as I imagined. Her engrossing 
love made it all clear. Hollingsworth could 
have no fault. That was the one principle at 
the center of the universe. And the doubtful 
guilt or possible integrity of other people, 
appearances, self-evident facts, the testimony 
of her own senses, — even Hollingsworth’s self 
accusation, had he volunteered it, — would 
have weighed not the value of a mote of 
thistle-down on the other side. So secure was 
she of his right, that she never thought of 
comparing it with another’s wrong, but left 
the latter to itself. 

Hollingsworth drew her arm within his, and 
soon disappeared with her among the trees. I 
cannot imagine how Zenobia knew when they 
were out of sight; she never glanced again 
toward them. But, retaining a proud attitude 

19 Blithedale 


290 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


so long as they might have thrown back a 
retiring look, they were no sooner departed, — 
utterly departed, — than she began slowly to 
sink down. It was as if a great, invisible, 
irresistible weight were pressing her to the 
earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned 
her forehead against the rock, and sobbed con- 
vulsively; dry sobs they seemed to be, such 
as have nothing to do with tears. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


291 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

ZENOBIA AND COVERDALE. 

Zenobia had entirely forgotten me. She 
fancied herself alone with her great grief. 
And had it been only a common pity that I 
felt for her, — the pity that her proud nature 
would have repelled, as the one worst wrong 
which the world yet held in reserve, — the 
r.acredness and awfulness of the crisis might 
have impelled me to steal away silently, so 
that not a dry leaf should rustle under my feet. 
I would have left her to struggle, in that soli- 
tude, with only the eye of God upon her. But, 
so it happened, I never once dreamed of ques- 
tioning my right to be there now, as I had 
questioned it just before, when I came so sud- 
denly upon Hollingsworth and herself, in the 
passion of their recent debate. It suits me 
not to explain what was the analogy that I 
saw, or imagined, between Zenobia’s situation 
and mine; nor, I believe, will the reader 
detect this one secret, hidden beneath many a 
revelation which perhaps concerned me less. 
In simple truth, however, as Zenobia leaned 
her forehead against the rock, shaken with that 
tearless agony, it seemed to me that the self- 
same pang, with hardly mitigated torment, 
leaped thrilling from her heart-strings to my 


292 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


own. Was it wrong, therefore, if I felt myself 
consecrated to the priesthood by sympathy 
like this, and called upon to minister to this 
woman’s affliction, so far as mortal could? 

But, indeed, what could mortal do for her? 
Nothing! The attempt would be a mockery 
and an anguish. Time, it is true, would steal 
away her grief, and bury it and the best of her 
heart in the same grave. But Destiny itself, 
methought, in its kindliest mood, could do no 
better for Zenobia, in the way of quick relief, 
than to cause the impending rock to impend a 
little further, and fall upon her head. So I 
leaned against a tree, and listened to her sobs, 
in unbroken silence. She was half prostrate, 
half kneeling, with her forehead still pressed 
against the rock. Her sobs were the only 
sound; she did not groan, nor give any other 
utterance to her distress. It was all involun- 
tary. 

At length, she sat up, put back her hair, 
and stared about her with a bewildered aspect, 
as if not distinctly recollecting the scene 
through which she had passed, nor cognizant 
of the situation in which it left her. Her face 
and brow were almost purple with the rush of 
blood. They whitened, however, by and by, 
and for some time retained this death-like hue. 
She put her hand to her forehead, with a ges- 
ture that made me forcibly conscious of an 
intense and living pain there. 

Her glance, wandering wildly to and fro, 
passed over me several times, without appear- 
ing to inform her of my presence. But, finally 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


293 


a look of recognition gleamed from her eyes 
into mine. 

“Is it you, Miles Coverdale?” said she, smil- 
ing. “Ah, I perceive what you are about! 
You are turning this whole affair into a ballad. 
Pray let me hear as many stanzas as you hap- 
pen to have ready!” 

“O, hush, Zenobia!” I answered. “Heaven 
knows what an ache is in my soul!” 

“It is genuine tragedy, is it not?” rejoined 
Zenobia, with a sharp, light laugh. “And 
you are willing to allow, perhaps, that I have 
had hard measure. But it is a woman’s doom, 
and I have deserved it like a woman ; so let 
there be no pity, as, on my part, there shall be 
no complaint. It is all right, now, or will 
shortly be so. But, Mr. Coverdale, by all 
means write this ballad, and put your soul’s 
ache into it, and turn your sympathy to good 
account, as other poets do, and as poets must, 
unless they choose to give us glittering icicles 
instead of lines of fire. As for the moral, it 
shall be distilled into the final stanza, in a drop 
of bitter honey. ” 

“What shall it be, Zenobia?” I inquired, 
endeavoring to fall in with her mood. 

“O, a very old one will serve the purpose,” 
she replied. “There are no new truths, much 
as we have prided ourselves on finding some. 
A moral? Why, this: — that, in the battle-field 
of life, the downright stroke, that would fall 
only on a man’s steel head-piece, is sure to 
light on a woman’s heart, over which she wears 
no breastplate, and whose wisdom it is, there- 


294 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


fore, to keep out of the conflict. Or, this: — 
that the whole universe, her own sex and yours, 
and Providence, or Destiny, to boot, make 
common cause against the woman who swerves 
one hair’s breadth out of the beaten track. 
Yes; and add (for I may as well own it, now) 
that, with that one hair’s breath, she goes all 
astray, and never sees the world in its true 
aspect afterward!” 

“This last is too stern a moral,” I observed. 
“Cannot we soften it a little?” 

“Do it, if you like, at your own peril, not on 
my responsibility, ’ ’ she answered. Then, with 
a sudden change of subject, she went on: 
“After all, he has flung away what would 
have served him better than the poor, pale 
flower he kept. What can Priscilla do for 
him? Put passionate warmth into his heart, 
when it shall be chilled with frozen hopes? 
Strengthen his hands, when they are weary 
with much doing and no performance? No! 
but only tend toward him with a blind, 
instinctive love, and hang her little, puny 
weakness for a clog upon his arm ! She can- 
not even give him such sympathy as is worth 
the name. For will he never, in many an hour 
of darkness, need that proud intellectual sym- 
pathy which he might have had from me? — the 
sympathy that would flash light along his 
course, and guide as well as cheer him? Poor 
Hollingsworth! Where will he find it now?” 

“Hollingsworth has a heart of ice!” said I, 
bitterly. “He is a wretch!” 

“Do him no wrong,” interrupted Zenobia, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


295 


turning haughtily upon me. “Presume not to 
estimate a man like Hollingsworth. It was 
my fault, all along, and none of his. I see it 
now! He never sought me. Why should he 
seek me? What had I to offer him? A miser- 
able, bruised and battered heart, spoilt long 
before he met me. A life, too, hopelessly 
entangled with a villain’s! He did well to 
cast me off. God be praised, he did it! And 
yet, had he trusted me, and borne with me a 
little longer, I would have saved him all this 
trouble. ” 

She was silent for a time, and stood with her 
eyes fixed on the ground. Again raising them, 
her look was more mild and calm. 

“Miles Coverdale!” said she. 

“Well, Zenobia,” I responded. “Can I do 
you any service?” 

“Very little, ” she replied. “But it is my 
purpose, as you may well imagine, to remove 
from Blithedale; and, most likely, I may not 
see Hollingsworth again. A woman in my 
position, you understand, feels scarcely at her 
ease among former friends. New faces — 
unaccustomed looks — those only can she toler- 
ate. She would pine among familiar scenes; 
she would be apt to blush, too, under the eyes 
that knew her secret; her heart might throb 
uncomfortably; she would mortify herself, I 
suppose, with foolish notions of having sacri- 
ficed the honor of her sex at the foot of proud, 
contumacious man. Poor womanhood, with 
its rights and wrongs! Here will be new 
matter for my course of lectures, at the idea of 


296 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


which you smiled, Mr. Coverdale, a month or 
two ago. But, as you have really a heart and 
sympathies, as far as they go, and as I shall 
depart without seeing Hollingsworth, I must 
entreat you to be a messenger between him 
and me.” 

“Willingly,” said I, wondering at the strange 
way in which her mind seemed to vibrate 
from the deepest earnest to mere levity. 
“What is the message?” 

“True, — What is it?” exclaimed Zenobia. 
“After all, I hardly know. On better consid- 
eration, I have no message. Tell him, — tell 
him something pretty and pathetic, that will 
come nicely and sweetly into your ballad, — 
anything you please, so it be tender and 
submissive enough. Tell him he has murdered 
me! Tell him that I’ll haunt him!” — she 
spoke these words with the wildest energy. — 
“And give him — no, give Priscilla — this!” 

Thus saying, she took the jeweled flower 
out of her hair; and it struck me as the act of 
a queen, when worsted in a combat, discrown- 
ing herself, as if she found a sort of relief in 
abasing all her pride. 

“Bid her wear this for Zenobia’s sake,” she 
continued. “She is a pretty little creature, 
and will make as soft and gentle a wife as the 
veriest Bluebeard could desire. Pity that she 
must fade so soon ! These delicate and puny 
maidens always do. Ten years hence, let Hol- 
lingsworth look at my face and Priscilla’s, and 
then choose betwixt them. Or, if he pleases, 
let him do it now. ” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


297 


How magnificently Zenobia looked, as she 
said this! The effect of her beauty was even 
heightened by the over-consciousness and self- 
recognition of it, into which, I suppose, Hol- 
lingsworth’s scorn had driven her. She under- 
stood the look of admiration in my face ; and — 
Zenobia to the last — it gave her pleasure. 

“It is an endless pity,” said she, “that I had 
not bethought myself of winning your heart, 
Mr. Coverdale, instead of Hollingsworth’s. I 
think I should have succeeded; and many 
women would have deemed you the worthier 
conquest of the two. You are certainly much 
the handsomest man. But there is a fate in 
these things. And beauty, in a man, has been 
of little account with me, since my earliest 
girlhood, when, for once, it turned my head. 
Now, farewell!” 

“Zenobia, whither are you going?” I asked. 

“No matter where,” said she. “But lam 
weary of this place, and sick to death of play- 
ing at philanthropy and progress. Of all vari- 
eties of mock-life, we have surely blundered 
into the very emptiest mockery, in our effort 
to establish the one true system. I have done 
with it; and Blithedale must find another 
woman to superintend the laundry, and you, 
Mr. Coverdale, another nurse to make your 
gruel, the next time you fall ill. It was, 
indeed, a foolish dream! Yet it gave us some 
pleasant summer days, and bright hopes, while 
they lasted. It can do no more; nor will it 
avail us to shed tears over a broken bubble. 
Here is my hand! Adieu!” 

20 Blithedale 


298 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


She gave me her hand, with the same free, 
whole-souled gesture as on the first afternoon 
of our acquaintance ; and, being greatly moved, 
I bethought me of no better method of express- 
ing my deep sympathy than to carry it to my 
lips. In so doing, I perceived that this white 
hand — so hospitably warm when I first touched 
it, five months since — was now cold as a verit- 
able piece of snow. 

“How very cold!” I exclaimed, holding it 
between both my own, with the vain idea of 
warming it. “What can be the reason? It is 
really death-like!” 

“The extremities die first, they say,” answered 
Zenobia, laughing. “And so you kiss this 
poor, despised, rejected hand! Well, my dear 
friend, I thank you. You have reserved your 
homage for the fallen. Lip of man will never 
touch my hand again. I intend to become a 
Catholic, for the sake of going into a nunnery. 
When you next hear of Zenobia, her face will 
be behind the black veil ; so look your last at it 
now — for all is over! Once more, fare- 
well!” 

She withdrew her hand, yet left a lingering 
pressure, which I felt long afterward. So inti- 
mately connected as I had been with perhaps 
the only man in whom she was ever truly 
interested, Zenobia looked on me as the repre- 
sentative of all the past, and was conscious 
that, in bidding me adieu, she likewise took 
final leave of Hollingsworth, and of this whole 
epoch of her life. Never did her beauty shine 
out more lustrously than in the last glimpse 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


299 


that I had of her. She departed, and was soon 
hidden among the trees. 

But, whether it was the strong impression 
of the foregoing scene, or whatever else the 
cause, I was affected with a fantasy that Ze- 
nobia had not actually gone, but was still hover- 
ing about the spot and haunting it. I seemed 
to feel her eyes upon me. It was as if the 
vivid coloring of her character had left a bril- 
liant stain upon the air. By degrees, how- 
ever, the impression grew less distinct. I 
flung myself upon the fallen leaves at the base 
of Eliot’s pulpit. The sunshine withdrew up 
the tree-trunks, and flickered on the topmost 
boughs; gray twilight made the wood obscure; 
the stars brightened out; the pendant boughs 
became wet with chill autumnal dews. But I 
was listless, worn out with emotion on my 
own behalf and sympathy for others, and had 
no heart to leave my comfortless lair beneath 
the rock. 

I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, 
all the circumstances of which utterly vanished 
at the moment when they converged to some 
tragical catastrophe, and thus grew too power- 
ful for the thin sphere of slumber that envel- 
oped them. Starting from the ground, I found 
the risen moon shining upon the rugged face 
of the rock, and myself all in a tremble. 


3C0 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

MIDNIGHT. 

It could not have been far from midnight 
when I came beneath Hollingsworth’s window, 
and, finding it open, flung in a tuft of grass 
with earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon 
the floor. He was either awake or sleeping 
very lightly: for scarcely a moment had gone 
by, before he looked out, and discerned me 
standing in the moonlight. 

“Is it you, Coverdale?” he asked. “What is 
the matter?” 

“Come down to me, Hollingsworth!” I 
answered. “I am anxious to speak with you. ” 

The strange tone of my own voice startled 
me, and him, probably, no less. He lost no 
time, and soon issued from the house-door, 
with his dress half arranged. 

“Again, what is the matter?” he asked, 
impatiently. 

“Have you seen Zenobia?” said I, “since 
you parted from her, at Eliot's pulpit?” 

“No,” answered Hollingsworth; “nor did I 
expect it. ” 

His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it. 
Hardly had he spoken, when Silas Foster 
thrust his head, done up in a cotton handker- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


301 


chief, out of another window, and took what 
he called — as it literally was — a squint at us. 

“Well, folks, what are ye about here?” he 
demanded. “Aha! are you there, Miles Cov- 
erdale? You have been turning night into day, 
since you left us, I reckon; and so you find it 
quite natural to come prowling about the house 
at this time o’ night, frightening my old 
woman out of her wits, and making her disturb 
a tired man out of his best nap. In with you, 
you vagabond, and to bed!” 

“Dress yourself quietly, Foster,” said I. 
“We want your assistance.” 

I could not, for the life of me, keep that 
strange tone out of :;:y voice. Silas Foster, 
obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel 
the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in 
it as well as Hollingsworth did. He immedi- 
ately withdrew his head, and I heard him 
yawning, muttering to his wife, and again 
yawning heavily, while he hurried on his 
clothes. Meanwhile, I showed Hollingsworth 
a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well- 
known cipher, and told where I had found it, 
and other circumstances, which had filled me 
with a suspicion so terrible that I left him, if 
he dared, to shape it out for himself. By the 
time my brief explanation was finished, we 
were joined by Silas Foster, in his blue woolen 
frock. 

“Well, boys,” cried he, peevishly, “what is 
to pay now?” 

“Tell him, Hollingsworth,” said I. 

Hollingsworth shivered, perceptibly, and 


302 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


drew in a hard breath betwixt his teeth. He 
steadied himself, however, and, looking the 
matter more firmly in the face than I had done, 
explained to Foster my suspicions, and the 
grounds of them, with a distinctness from 
which, in spite of my utmost efforts, my words 
had swerved aside. The tough-nerved yeoman, 
in his comment, put a finish on the business, 
and brought out the hideous idea in its full 
terror, as if he were removing the napkin from 
the face of a corpse. 

“And so you think she’s drowned herself?” 
he cried. 

I turned away my face. 

“What on earth should the young woman do 
that for?” exclaimed Silas, his eyes half out of 
his head with mere surprise. “Why she has 
more means than she can use or waste, and 
lacks nothing to make her comfortable, but a 
husband, and that’s an article she could have, 
any day. There’s some mistake about this, I 
tell you!” 

“Come,” said I, shuddering ; “let us go and 
ascertain the truth. ’ ’ 

“Well, well,” answered Silas Foster; “just 
as you say. We’ll take the long pole, with the 
hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket 
out of the draw-well, when the rope is broken. 
With that, and a couple of long-handled hay- 
rakes, I’ll answer for finding her, if she’s any 
where to be found. Strange enough ! Zenobia 
drown herself! No, no; I don’t believe it. 
She had too much sense, and too much means, 
and enjoyed life a great deal too well.” 


THE BL1THEDALE ROMANCE. 


303 


When our few preparations were completed, 
we hastened, by a shorter than the customary 
route, through fields and pastures, and across a 
portion of the meadow, to the particular spot 
on the river-bank which I had paused to com 
template in the course of my afternoon’s ram- 
ble. A nameless presentiment had again 
drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot’s pulpit. 
I showed my companions where I had found 
the handkerchief, and pointed to two or three 
footsteps, impressed into the clayey margin, 
and tending toward the water. Beneath its 
shallow verge, among the water-weeds, there 
were further traces, as yet unobliterated by 
the sluggish current, which was there almost 
at a standstill. Silas Foster thrust his face 
down close to these footsteps, and picked up a 
shoe that had escaped my observation, being 
half imbedded in the mud. 

“There’s a kid shoe that never was made on 
a Y ankee last, ’ ’ observed he. “I know enough 
of shoemaker’s craft to tell that. French 
manufacture; and, see what a high instep! and 
how evenly she trod in it! There never was a 
woman that stepped handsomer in her shoes 
than Zenobia did. Here,” he added, address- 
ing Hollingsworth; “would you like to keep 
the shoe?” 

Hollingsworth started back. 

“Give it to me, Foster,” said I. 

I dabbled in in the water, to rinse off the 
mud, and have kept it ever since. Not far 
from this spot lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up 
on the oozy river-side, and generally half-full 


304 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


of water. It served the angler to go in quest 
of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his 
wild ducks. Setting this crazy bark afloat, I 
seated myself in the stern with the paddle, 
while Hollingsworth sat in the bows with the 
hooked pole, and Silas Foster amidships with a 
hay-rake. 

“It puts me in mind of my young days,” 
remarked Silas, “when I used to steal out of 
bed to go bobbing for horn-pouts and eels. 
Heigh-ho! — well, life and death together make 
sad work for us all ! Then I was a boy, bob- 
bing for fish; and now I am getting to be an 
old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead 
body ! I tell you what, lads, if I thought any- 
thing had really happened to Zenobia, I should 
feel kind o’ sorrowful.” 

“I wish, at least, you would hold your 
tongue,” muttered I. 

The moon, that night, though past the full, 
was still large and oval, and having risen 
between eight and nine o’clock, now shone 
aslantwise over the river, throwing the high, 
opposite bank, with its woods, into deep sha- 
dow, but lighting up the hither shore pretty 
effectually. Not a ray appeared to fall on the 
river itself. It lapsed imperceptibly away, a 
broad, black, inscrutable depth, keeping its 
own secrets from the eye of man, as impene- 
trably as mid-ocean could. 

“Well, Miles Coverdale, ” said Foster, “you 
are the helmsman. How do you mean to man- 
age this business?” 

“I shall let the boat drift, broadside fore- 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


S05 


most, past that stump,” I replied. ‘‘I know 
the bottom, having sounded it in fishing. The 
shore, on this side, after the first step or two, 
goes off very abruptly ; and there is a pool, 
just by the stump, twelve or fifteen feet deep. 
The current could not have force enough to 
sweep any sunken object, even if partially 
buoyant, out of that hollow.” 

“Come, then,” said Silas; “but I doubt 
whether I can touch bottom with this hay-rake, 
if it’s as deep as you say. Mr. Hollingsworth, 
I think you’ll be the lucky man to-night, such 
luck as it is. ” 

We floated past the stump. Silas Foster 
plied his rake manfully, poking it as far as he 
could into the water, and immersing the whole 
length of his arm besides. Hollingsworth at 
first sat motionless, with the hooked pole ele- 
vated in the air. But, by and by, with a ner- 
vous and jerky movement, he began to plunge 
it into the blackness that upbore us, setting 
his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, 
methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly 
enemy. I bent over the side of the boat. So 
obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was 
that dark stream, that — and the thought made 
me shiver like a leaf — I might as well have 
tried to look into the enigma of the eternal 
world, to discover what had become of Zeno- 
bia’s soul, as into the river’s depths, to find 
her body. And there, perhaps, she lay, with 
her face upward, while the shadow of the boat, 
and my own pale face peering downward, 
passed slowly betwixt her and the sky! 

20 Blithedale 


306 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


Once, twice, thrice, I paddled the boat up 
stream, and again suffered it to glide, with the 
river’s slow, funereal motion, downward. 
Silas Foster had raked up a large mass of stuff, 
which, as it came toward the surface, looked 
somewhat like a flowing garment, but proved 
to be a monstrous tuft of water- weeds. Hol- 
lingsworth, with a gigantic effort, upheaved a 
sunken log. When once free of the bottom, it 
rose partly out of water, — all weedy and slimy, 
a devilish-looking object, which the moon had 
not shone upon for half a hundred years, — then 
plunged again, and sullenly returned to its old 
resting-place, for the remnant of the century. 

“That looked ugly,” quoth Silas. “I half 
thought it was the evil one, on the same errand 
as ourselves, — searching for Zenobia. 

“He shall never get her,” said I, giving the 
boat a strong impulse. 

“That’s not for you to say, my boy,” re- 
torted the yeoman. “Pray God he never has, 
and never may! Slow work this, however! I 
should really be glad to find something! 
Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only 
good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and 
poke, and grope, hereabouts, till morning, and 
have our labor for our pains! For my part, I 
shouldn’t wonder if the creature had only lost 
her shoe in the mud, and saved her soul alive, 
after all. My stars! how she will laugh at us, 
to-morrow morning!” 

It is indescribable what an image of Zenobia 
— at the breakfast-table, full of warm and 
mirthful life — this surmise of Silas Foster’s 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


307 


brought before my mind. The terrible phan- 
tasm of her death was thrown by it into the 
remotest and dimmest background, where it 
seemed to grow as improbable as a myth. 

“Yes, Silas, it may be as you say,” cried I. 

The drift of the stream had again borne us a 
little below the stump, when I felt, — yes, felt, 
for it was as if the iron hook had smote my 
breast, — felt Hollingsworth’s pole strike some 
object at the bottom of the river! He started 
up, and almost overset the boat. 

“Hold on!” cried Foster; “you have her !’’ 

Putting a fury of strength into the effort, 
Hollingsworth heaved amain, and up came a 
white swash to the surface of the river. It 
was the flow of a woman’s garments. A little 
higher, and we saw her dark hair streaming 
down the current. Black River of Death, thou 
hadst yielded up thy victim! Zenobia was 
found! 

vSilas Foster laid hold of the body; Hollings- 
worth, likewise, grappled with it; and I 
steered toward the bank, gazing all the while 
at Zenobia, whose limbs were swaying in the 
current close at the boat’s side. Arriving 
near the shore, we all three stepped into the 
water, bore her out, and laid her on the ground 
beneath a tree. 

“Poor child!’’ said Foster, — and his dry old 
heart, I verily believe, vouchsafed a tear, — 
“I’m sorry for her!’’ 

Were I to describe the perfect horror of the 
spectacle, the reader might justly reckon it to 
me for a sin and shame. For more than twelve 


308 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE 


long years I have borne it in my memory, and 
could now reproduce it as freshly as if it were 
still before my eyes. Of all modes of death, 
methinks it is the ugliest. Her wet garments 
swathed limbs of terrible inflexibility. She 
was the marble image of a death-agony. Her 
arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, 
and were bent before her with clenched hands; 
her knees, too, were bent, and — thank God for 
it! — in the attitude of prayer. Ah, that rigid- 
ity! It is impossible to bear the terror of it 
It seemed, — I must needs impart so much of 
my own miserable idea, — it seemed as if her 
body must keep the same position in the coffin, 
and that her skeleton would keep it in the 
grave ; and thc.t when Zenobia rose at the day 
of judgment, it would be in just the same atti- 
tude as now ! 

One hope I had; and that, too, was mingled 
half, with fear. She knelt, as if in prayer. 
With the last, choking consciousness, her soul, 
bubbling out through her lips, it may be, had 
given itself up to the Father, reconciled and 
penitent. But her arms! They were bent 
before her, as if she struggled against Provi- 
dence in never-ending hostility. Her hands! 
They were clenched in immitigable defiance. 
Away with the hideous thought! The flitting 
moment after Zenobia sank into the dark pool 
— when her breath was gone, and her soul at 
her lips — was as long, in its capacity of God’s 
infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the 
world! 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 30^ 

Foster bent over the body, and carefully 
examined it. 

“You have wounded the poor thing’s 
breast,” said he to Hollingsworth; “close by 
her heart, too!” 

“Ha!” cried Hollingsworth, with a start. 

And so he had, indeed, both before and after 
death ! 

“See!” said Foster. “That’s the place 
where the iron struck her. It looks cruelly, 
but she never felt it!” 

He endeavored to arrange the arms of the 
corpse decently by its side. His utmost 
strength, however, scarcely sufficed to bring 
them down ; and rising again, the next instant, 
they bade him defiance, exactly as before. He 
made another effort, with the same result. 

“In God’s name, Silas Foster,” cried I, with 
bitter indignation, “let that dead woman 
alone!” 

“Why, man, it’s not decent!” answered he, 
staring at me in amazement. “I can’t bear to 
see her looking so! Well, well,” added he, 
after a third effort, “ ’tis of no use, sure 
enough ; and we must leave the women to do 
their best with her, after we get to the house. 
The sooner that’s done, the better.” 

We took two rails from a neighboring fence, 
ad formed a bier by laying across some boards 
from the bottom of the boat. And thus' we 
bore Zenobia homeward. Six hours before, 
how beautiful! At midnight, what a horror ! 
A reflection occurs to me that will show ludi- 
crously, I doubt not, on my page, but must 


310 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


come in, for its sterling truth. Being the 
woman that she was could Zenobia have fore- 
seen all these ugly circumstances of death, — 
how ill it would become her, the altogether 
unseemly aspect which she must put on, and 
especially old Silas Foster's efforts to improve 
the matter, — she would no more have commit- 
ted the dreadful act than have exhibited her- 
self to a public assembly, in a badly-fitting 
garment! Zenobia, I have often thought, was 
not quite simple in her death. She had seen 
pictures, I suppose, of drowned persons in lithe 
and graceful attitudes. And she deemed it 
well and decorous to die as so many village 
maidens have, wronged in their first love, and 
seeking peace in the bosom of the old, familiar 
stream, — so familiar that they could not dread 
it, — where, in childhood, they used to bathe 
their little feet, wading mid-leg deep, unmind- 
ful of wet skirts. But in Zenobia’s case there 
was some taint of the Arcadian affectation that 
had been visible enough in all our lives, for a 
few months past. 

This, however, to my conception, takes noth- 
ing from the tragedy. For, has not the world 
come to an awfully sophisticated pass, when, 
after a certain degree of acquaintance with it, 
we cannot even put ourselves to death in 
whole-hearted simplicity? 

Slowly, slowly, with many a dreary pause, 
— resting the bier often on some rock, or bal- 
ancing it across a mossy log, to take fresh hold, 
— we bore our burden onward through the 
moonlight, and at last laid Zenobia on the floor 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


811 


of the old farm-house. By and by came three 
or four withered women, and stood whispering 
around the corpse, peering at it through their 
spectacles, holding up their skinny hands, 
shaking their night-capped heads, and taking 
counsel of one another’s experience what was 
to be done. 

With those tire- women we left Zenobia! 


312 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


XXVIII. 

BLITHEDALE PASTURE. 

Blithedale, thus far in its progress, had 
never found the necessity of a burial-ground. 
There was some consultation among us in what 
spot Zenobia might most fitly be laid. It was 
my own wish that she should sleep at the base 
of Eliot’s pulpit, and that on the rugged front 
of the rock the name by which we familiarly 
knew her, — Zenobia — and not another word, 
should be deeply cut, and left for the moss and 
lichens to fill up at their long leisure. But 
Hollingsworth (to whose ideas on this point 
great deference was due) made it his request 
that her grave might be dug on the gently 
sloping hill-side, in the wide pasture, where, 
as we once supposed, Zenobia and he had 
planned to build their cottage. And thus it 
was done, accordingly. 

She was buried very much as other people 
have been for hundreds of years gone by. In 
anticipation of a death, we Blithedale colonists 
had sometimes set our fancies at work to 
arrange a funereal ceremony, which should be 
the proper symbolic expression of our spiritual 
faith and eternal hopes; and this we meant to 
substitute for those customary rites which were 
moulded originally out of the Gothic gloom, 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


313 


and by long use, like an old velvet pall, have 
so much more than their first death-smell in 
them. But when the occasion came, we found 
it the simplest and truest thing, after all, to 
content ourselves with the old fashion, taking 
away what we could, but interpolating no 
novelties, and particularly avoiding all frip- 
pery of flowers and cheerful emblems. The 
procession moved from the farm-house. Near- 
est the dead walked an old man in deep mourn- 
ing, his face mostly concealed in a white hand- 
kerchief, and with Priscilla leaning on his arm. 
Hollingsworth and myself came next. We all 
stood around the narrow niche in the cold 
earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard 
the rattle of the crumbly soil upon its lid, — 
that final sound, which mortality awakens on 
the utmost verge of sense, as if in the vain 
hope of bringing an echo from the spiritual 
world. 

I noticed a stranger — a stranger to most of 
those present, though known to me, — who, 
after the coffin had descended, took up a hand- 
ful of earth, and flung it first into the grave. 
I had given up Hollingsworth’s arm, and now 
found myself near this man. 

“It was an idle thing — a foolish thing — for 
Zenobia to do,” said he. “She was the last 
woman in the world to whom death could have 
been necessary. It was too absurd! I have 
no patience with her.” 

“Why so?” I inquired, smothering my hor- 
ror at his cold comment in my eager curiosity 
to discover some tangible truth as to his re!a- 


314 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


tion with Zenobia. “If any cfisis could justify 
the sad wrong she offered to herself, it was 
surely that in which she stood. Everything 
had failed her; — prosperity in the world’s 
sense, for her opulence was gone, — the heart’s 
prosperity, in love. And there was a secret 
burthen on her, the nature of which is best 
known to you. Young as she was, she had 
tried life fully, had no more to hope, and some- 
thing, perhaps, to fear. Had Providence taken 
her away in its own holy hand, I should have 
thought it the kindest dispensation that could 
be awarded to one so wrecked.” 

“You mistake the matter completely,” re- 
plied Westervelt. 

“What, then, is your own view of it?” I 
asked. 

“Her mind was active, and various in its 
powers,” said he. “Her heart had a manifold 
adaptation ; her constitution an infinite buoy- 
ancy, which (had she possessed only a little 
patience to await the reflex of her troubles) 
would have borne her upward, triumphantly, 
for twenty years to come. Her beauty would 
not have waned — or scarcely so, and surely not 
beyond the reach of art to restore it — in all 
that time. She had life’s summer all before 
her, and a hundred varieties of brilliant suc- 
cess. What an actress Zenobia might have 
been! It was one of her least valuable capa- 
bilities. How forcibly she might have wrought 
upon the world, either directly in her own per- 
son, or by her influence upon some man, or a 
series of men, of controlling genius! Every 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


315 


prize that could be worth a woman’s having — 
and many prizes which other women are too 
timid to desire — lay within Zenobia’s reach.” 

“In all this,” I observed, “there would have 
been nothing to satisfy her heart.” 

“Her heart!” answered Westervelt, con* 
temptuously. “That troublesome organ (as 
she had hitherto found it) would have been 
kept in its due place and degree, and have had 
all the gratification it could fairly claim. She 
would soon have established a control over it. 
Love had failed her, you say! Had it never 
failed her before? Yet she survived it, and 
loved again, — possibly not once alone, nor 
twice either. And now to drown herself for 
yonder dreamy philanthropist!” 

“Who are you,” I exclaimed indignantly, 
“that dare to speak thus of the dead? You 
seem to intend a eulogy, yet leave out what- 
ever was noblest in her, and blacken while you 
mean to praise. I have long considered you 
as Zenobia’s evil fate. Your sentiments con- 
firm me in the idea, but leave me still ignorant 
as to the mode in which you have influenced 
her life. The connection may have been in- 
dissoluble, except by death. Then, indeed — 
always in the hope of God’s infinite mercy, — I 
cannot deem it a misfortune that she sleeps in 
yonder grave !” 

“No matter what I was to her,” he answered, 
gloomily, yet without actual emotion. “She 
is now beyond my reach. Had she lived, and 
hearkened to my counsels, we might have 
served each other well. But there Zenobia 


316 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


lies in yonder pit, with the dull earth over her. 
Twenty years of a brilliant lifetime thrown 
away for a mere woman’s whim!” 

Heaven deal with Westervelt according to 
his nature and deserts ! — that is to say, annihi- 
late him. He was altogether earthly, worldly, 
made for time and its gross objects, and inca- 
pable — except by a sort of dim reflection 
caught from other minds — of so much as one 
spiritual idea. Whatever stain Zenobia had 
was caught from him ; nor does it seldom hap- 
pen that a character of admirable qualities 
loses its better life because the atmosphere 
that should sustain it is rendered poisonous by 
such breath as this man mingled with Zeno- 
bia’s. Yet his reflections possessed their share 
of truth. It was a woful thought, that a 
woman of Zenobia’s diversified capacities 
should have fancied herself irretrievably de- 
feated on the broad battle-field of life, and 
with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, 
merely because Love had gone against her. It 
is nonsense, and a miserable wrong, — the 
result, like so many others, of masculine ego- 
tism, — that the success or failure of woman’s 
existence should be made to depend wholly on 
the affections, and on one species of affection, 
while man has such a multitude of other 
chances, that this seems but an incident. For 
its own sake, if it will do no more, the world 
should throw open all its avenues to the pass- 
port of a woman’s bleeding heart. 

As we stood around the grave, I looked 
often toward Priscilla, dreading to see her 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


317 


wholly overcome with grief. And deeply 
grieved, in truth, she was. But a character so 
simply constituted as hers has room only for a 
single predominant affection. No other feel- 
ing can touch the heart’s inmost core, nor do it 
any deadly mischief. Thus, while we see that 
such a being responds to every breeze with 
tremulous vibration, and imagine that she 
must be shattered by the first rude blast, we 
find her retaining her equilibrium amid shocks 
that might have overthrown many a sturdier 
frame. So with Priscilla; — her one possible 
misfortune was Hollingsworth’s unkindness; 
and that was destined never to befall her, — 
never yet, at least, — for Priscilla has not died. 

But Hollingsworth ! After all the evil that 
he did, are we to leave him thus, blest with 
the entire devotion of this one true heart, and 
with wealth at his disposal, to execute the 
long-contemplated project that had led him so 
far astray? What retribution is there here? 
My mind being vexed with precisely this 
query, I made a journey, some years since, for 
the sole purpose of catching a last glimpse at 
Hollingsworth, and judging for myself whether 
he were a happy man or no. I learned that he 
inhabited a small cottage, that his way of life 
was exceedingly retired, and that my only 
chance of encountering him or Priscilla was to 
meet them in a secluded lane, where, in the 
latter part of the afternoon, they were accus- 
tomed to walk. I did meet them, accordingly. 
As they approached me, I observed in Hol- 
lingsworth's face a depressed and melancholy 


318 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


look, that seemed habitual, — the powerfully 
built man showed a self-distrustful weakness, 
and a childlike or childish tendency to press 
close, and closer still, to the side of the slender 
woman whose arm was within his. In Pris- 
cilla’s manner there was a protective and 
watchful quality, as if she felt herself the 
guardian of her companion; but, likewise, a 
deep, submissive, unquestioning reverence, 
and also a veiled happiness in her fair and 
quiet countenance. 

Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and 
gave me a kind and friendly smile, but with a 
slight gesture, which I could not help inter- 
preting as an entreaty not to make myself 
known to Plollingsworth. Nevertheless, an 
impulse took possession of me, and compelled 
me to address him. 

“I have come, Hollingsworth,” said I, “to 
view your grand edifice for the reformation of 
criminals. Is it finished yet?” 

“No, nor begun, ” answered he, without rais- 
ing his eyes. “A very small one answers all 
my purposes.” 

Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance. 
But I spoke again, with a bitter and revengeful 
emotion, as if flinging a poisoned arrow at 
Hollingsworth’s heart. 

“Up to this moment,” I inquired, “how 
many criminals have you reformed?” 

“Notone,” said Hollingsworth, with his eyes 
still fixed on the ground. “Ever since we 
parted, I have been busy with a single mur- 
derer. ” 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 319 

Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I 
forgave him ; for I remembered the wild en- 
ergy, the passionate shriek, with which Zeno- 
bia had spoken those words, — “Tell him he 
has murdered me! Tell him that I’ll haunt 
him!” — and I knew what murderer he meant, 
and whose vindictive shadow dogged the side 
where Priscilla was not. 

The moral which presents itself to my reflec- 
tions, as drawn from Hollingsworth’s character 
and errors, is simply this, — that, admitting 
what is called philanthropy, when adopted as 
a profession, to be often useful by its energetic 
impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the 
individual whose ruling passion, in one exclu- 
sive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is 
fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, the rich juices 
of which God never meant should be pressed 
violently out, and distilled into alcoholic 
liquor, by an unnatural process, but should 
render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, 
and insensibly influence other hearts and other 
lives to the same blessed end. I see in Hol- 
lingsworth an exemplification of the most 
awful truth in Bunyan’s book of such, — from 
the very gate of heaven there is a byway to 
the pit! 

But, all this while, we have been standing 
by Zenobia’s grave. I have never since beheld 
it, but make no question that the grass grew 
all the better, on that little parallelogram of 
pasture-land, for the decay of the beautiful 
woman who slept beneath. How much Nature 
seems to love us! And how readily, neverthe- 


320 ' 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


less without a sigh or a complaint, she converts 
us to a meaner purpose, when her highest one 
— that of conscious intellectual life and sensi- 
bility — has been untimely balked! While 
Zenobia lived. Nature was proud of her, and 
directed all eyes upon that radiant presence, 
as her fairest handiwork. Zenobia perished. 
Will not Nature shed a tear? Ah, no! — she 
adopts the calamity at once into her system, 
and is just as well pleased, for aught we can 
see, with the tuft of ranker vegetation that 
grew out of Zenobia’s heart, as with all the 
beauty which has bequeathed us no earthly 
representative except in this crop of weeds. 
It is because the spirit is inestimable that the 
lifeless body is so little valued. 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


321 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

MILES COVERDALE’S CONFESSION. 

It remains only to say a few words about 
myself. Not improbably, the reader might 
be willing to spare me the trouble; for I have 
made but a poor and dim figure in my own 
narrative, establishing no separate interest, 
and suffering my colorless life to take its hue 
from other lives. But one still retains some 
little consideration for one’s self; so I keep 
these last two or three pages for my individual 
and sole behoof. 

But what, after all, have I to tell? Nothing, 
nothing, nothing! I left Blithedale within the 
week after Zenobia’s death, and went back 
thither no more. The whole soil of our farm, 
for a long time afterward, seemed but the sod- 
ded earth over her grave. I could not toil 
there nor live upon its products. Often, how- 
ever, in these years that are darkening around 
me, I remember our beautiful scheme of a 
noble and unselfish life ; and how fair, in that 
first summer, appeared the prospect that it 
might endure for generations, and be per- 
fected, as the ages rolled away, into the system 
of a people and a world! Were my former 
associates now there, — were there only three 
or four of those true-hearted men still laboring 


322 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


in the sun, — I sometimes fancy that I should 
direct my world-weary footsteps thitherward, 
and entreat them to receive me, for old friend- 
ship’s sake. More and more I feel that we had 
struck upon what ought to be a truth. Pos- 
terity may dig it up, and profit by it. The 
experiment, so far as its original projectors 
were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; 
first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it 
well deserved, for this infidelity to its own 
higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our 
whole hopeful hearts, the town-paupers, aged, 
nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly 
a-field. Alas, what faith is requisite to bear 
up against such results of generous effort ! 

My subsequent life has passed, — I was going 
to say happily, — but, at all events, tolerably 
enough. I am now at middle age, — well, well, 
a step or two beyond the midmost point, and I 
care not a fig who knows it ! — a bachelor, with 
no very decided purpose of ever being other- 
wise. I have been twice to Europe, and spent 
a year or two rather agreeably at each visit. 
Being well to do in the world, and having 
nobody but myself to care for, I live very 
much at my ease, and fare sumptuously every 
day. As for poetry, I have given it up, not- 
withstanding that Doctor Griswold — as the 
reader, of course, knows — has placed me at a 
fair elevation among our minor minstrelsy, on 
the strength of my pretty little volume, pub- 
lished ten years ago. As regards human prog- 
ress (in spite of my irrepressible yearnings 
over the Blithedale reminiscences), let them 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


323 


believe in it who can, and aid in it who choose. 
If I could earnestly do either, it might be all 
the better for my comfort. As Hollingsworth 
once told me, I lack a purpose. How strange ! 
He was ruined, morally, by an overplus of the 
very same ingredient, the want of which, I occa- 
sionally suspect, has rendered my own life all 
an emptiness. I by no means wish to die. 
Yet, were there any cause, in this whole chaos 
of human struggle, worth a sane man’s dying 
for, and which my death would benefit, then — 
provided, however, the effort did not involve 
an unreasonable amount of trouble — methinks 
I might be bold to offer up my life. If Kos- 
suth, for example, would pitch the battle-field 
of Hungarian rights within an easy ride of my 
abode, and choose a mild, sunny morning, 
after breakfast, for the conflict, Miles Cover- 
dale would gladly be his man, for one brave 
rush upon the leveled bayonets. Further than 
that, I should be loth to pledge myself. 

I exaggerate my own defects. The reader 
must not take my own word for it, nor believe 
me altogether changed from the young man 
who once hoped strenuously, and struggled 
not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine 
have gained honor in the world ; frostier hearts 
have imbibed new warmth, and been newly 
happy. Life, however, it must be owned, has 
come to rather an idle pass with me. Would 
my friends like to know what brought it thith- 
er? There is one secret, — I have concealed it 
all along, and never meant to let the least 
whisper of it escape, — one foolish little secret, 


324 


THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. 


which possibly may have had something to do 
with these inactive years of meridian manhood, 
with my bachelorship, with the unsatisfied 
retrospect that I fling back on life, and my 
listless glance toward the future. Shall I re- 
veal it? It is an absurd thing for a man in his 
afternoon, — a man of the world, moreover, with 
these three white hairs in his brown mustache, 
and that deepening track of a crow’s foot on 
each temple, — an absurd thing ever to have 
happened, and quite the absurdest for an old 
bachelor, like me, to talk about. But it rises 
in my throat; so let it come. 

I perceive, moreover, that the confession, 
brief as it shall be, will throw a gleam of light 
over my behavior throughout the foregoing 
incidents, and is, indeed, essential to the full 
understanding of my story. The reader, there- 
fore, since I have disclosed so much, is entitled 
to this one word more. As I write it, he will 
charitably suppose me to blush, and turn away 
my face : — 

I — I myself — was in love — with — Priscilla! 


THE END. 


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